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Why Crazy Rich Asians director worked on Home Before Dark, new Apple TV+ mystery series
- Jon Chu directed the first two episodes of series that follows a nine-year-old aspiring journalist who uncovers a cold case others tried hard to bury
- Chu believes the mystery series will make for a good binge-watch for people cooped up in their houses during the coronavirus pandemic
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Jon Chu, who directed Crazy Rich Asians, finds it fitting that his first big foray into television is with Apple’s new streaming service.
He, after all, grew up in Los Altos, California – the same US city where Steve Jobs once lived (and home to that famous garage). And he has fond memories of how Apple employees and other tech workers who frequented his parents’ restaurant there would occasionally drop off equipment for the fledgling young filmmaker to use on his projects.
“In a sense, I was raised by Silicon Valley to be a storyteller,” he says. “This is kind of like coming home for me.”
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Chu is a director and executive producer for Home Before Dark, a tense mystery series that premiered on Friday on Apple TV+. It follows a nine-year-old aspiring journalist named Hilde (Brooklynn Prince) who moves with her family from New York to the small lakeside town where her father (Jim Sturgess) spent his youth. There, her dogged pursuit of the truth leads her to uncover a cold case that everyone in town, including her dad, tried hard to bury.
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The 10-episode series, which has already been picked up for a second season, is inspired by the real-life investigative reporting of kid journalist Hilde Lysiak, who ran her own neighbourhood newspaper and, at the age of nine, broke a story about a murder in her hometown of Patagonia, Arizona.
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