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Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding and Constance Wu in a scene from Crazy Rich Asians. ABC has picked up an idea for a TV series, Lazy Rich Asians, to capitalise on the film’s success, a report says. Photo: Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros. Entertainment/AP

Not crazy: Lazy Rich Asians TV series pitch picked up by US TV network, report says

Asian-American writer Jessica Gao’s pitch for a series about a Chinese-American who becomes unwilling matriarch of ‘her crazy, exhausting family’ would let ABC network ride on success of Crazy Rich Asians film

Move aside Crazy Rich Asians. A new project penned by an Asian-American talent, tentatively titled Lazy Rich Asians, is being picked up by the ABC television network in the United States, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Pitched by Jessica Gao, who this month won an Emmy for an episode she wrote and produced for the animated sci-fi sitcom Rick and Morty, the comedy centres around Janet Zhao, “a first-generation Chinese-American woman who struggles to set healthy boundaries with her crazy, exhausting family”, according to the report.

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“When her wealthy grandmother dies and names Janet the sole inheritor, she suddenly finds herself the unwilling new matriarch of the family she's spent her life trying to keep at arm's length,” The Hollywood Reporter writes.

ABC is reported to be interested in the proposal and keen to ride on the recent success of the big-screen adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s bestselling novel about a university professor and her mega-rich boyfriend. Crazy Rich Asians; directed by Jon Chu and starring Constance Wu, Henry Golding and Michelle Yeoh, is the first major Hollywood studio release to feature a mostly Asian cast in 25 years.

Jessica Gao, who won an Emmy for an episode she wrote and produced for the animated sci-fi sitcom Rick and Morty, has pitched a comedy tentatively titled Lazy Rich Asians to US TV network ABC. Photo: courtesy of Twitter

The romantic comedy, made for US$30 million, was released last month and topped the North American box office for three weeks, with takings of US$136 million in that market alone.

Kwan is collaborating with STX Entertainment on a Hong Kong-based drama series for Amazon that is said to revolve around the city’s most influential and powerful family (the identity of which is yet to be revealed).

Novelist Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians, is working with STX Entertainment on a Hong Kong-based drama series about the city’s most powerful family. Photo: AFP

According to the California-based entertainment and media outfit, director/producer Will Graham – who worked on Amazon’s award-winning series Mozart in the Jungle – and writer David Sangalli are also on board the yet-to-be-titled project.

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