Only bearing a slight resemblance to 2006 award-winning graphic novel of the same name, American Born Chinese stands as a brilliant adaptation.
The television show, set for release on May 24, revolves around Jin Wang (Ben Wang), a Chinese American high schooler, who just wants to fit in despite his arguing parents, heavenly beings demanding his attention, and his own insecurities.
The creatives behind the Disney+ series took on an unusual adaptation strategy to spotlight relatable characters with resonance to the Asian American experience, which drew in a talented cast and crew.
A 10 year creative courtship
From the moment he read the graphic novel in 2006, producer Melvin Mar knew he wanted to turn it into a television series. Over the following ten years, Mar requested the rights to adapt American Born Chinese from author Gene Luen Yang. The answer every time was a polite “no.”
That is, until the two met in person. A couple months after Yang and Mar’s first conversation, Yang called Mar—Yang was finally comfortable letting someone adapt his work. Mar, overjoyed, brought Kelvin Yu, the mind behind Bob’s Burgers, on board as the showrunner to start work on the adaptation.
“The moral of the story is if you love something like that, wait it out. Hopefully things align and it’ll happen,” says Yang when reflecting on the decade-long process.
Given the task of spinning a 240-page graphic novel into eight episodes for television, Yu, Mar, and Yang decided to stray away from telling the story exactly as is in the novel, a usual adaptation strategy.
“Kelvin, Melvin, and I had a lot of conversations from the very beginning, and those conversations convinced me that these guys got what I was trying to do with the book,” said Yang. “It made me feel better about handing it over to them.”
The trio decided to “boil the novel down to its essence,” leaving a few central themes and characters which would become the basis of the television show….
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