'Crazy Rich Asians' Finally Gets Its Sequel, as an HBO Drama

Constance Wu, Henry Golding and Ronny Chieng return for eight hourlong episodes, with Michelle Yeoh recurring.

For eight years, Jon M. Chu says, somebody asked him almost every day when the “Crazy Rich Asians” sequel was coming. The answer turns out to be eight hours of HBO.

HBO has ordered a one-hour drama series continuing the story, with Constance Wu, Henry Golding and Emmy winner Ronny Chieng starring and Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh in a recurring role, Deadline reported Thursday. It comes from Adele Lim, who co-wrote the movie, from Chu, who directed it, and from Kevin Kwan, whose bestselling novels started all of this.

No Hollywood studio romcom had earned more in North America in nearly a decade, according to Deadline. What fans spent years asking for was a second movie. What they're getting is a drama, not a romcom, and Deadline says that genre call was made early in the show's development.

Lim is selling the longer format as the upgrade. “It's a Crazy Rich family reunion!” she said in HBO's announcement, adding that the series gets eight episodes to explore the characters where a sequel film would've had one movie. Kwan said a series gives his stories “the breathing room of an HBO series.”

That's a lot of room for a story that started out simple: Rachel, a Chinese-American woman played by Wu, travels to Singapore with her boyfriend, Nick (Golding), and finds out before the wedding that his family is extremely rich. Producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, whose company Color Force developed and produced the film, said the series picks up where the movie ended.

Where it ended up at HBO says something too. The project started at HBO Max, which set up a development room in early 2025, and it's now moved to the main HBO network. Harry Potter, Dune: Prophecy, IT: Welcome to Derry, The Penguin and Lanterns made the same move, all of them built on Warner Bros. titles. HBO and Warner Bros. Television will co-produce.

It's also HBO under new management. The network now belongs to David Ellison's Skydance, and HBO's announcement quoted Casey Bloys as co-chair and chief content officer of Skydance Direct-To-Consumer. The show had been in development for about two years. Bloys called its four returning stars global superstars and said fans of the film and the novels are eager for more.

The cast is a bigger draw than it was the first time. Since the movie, Chu said, its actors have become movie stars, superheroes and arena-filling performers, and Yeoh has won an Oscar. Fans kept the movie going in between, he said, everywhere “from mahjong nights to becoming the ultimate airplane movie.”

Lim said the writers room is already at work. Chu, finally free of the question he's been asked every day since the movie came out, ended his statement this way: “Well… bok bok bitch, we're back.”

Source: Deadline, retrieved October 9, 2026.