‘The White Lotus’ star Will Sharpe to direct ‘Crying in H Mart’ movie adaptation
By Carl Samson
March 21, 2023
Will Sharpe is set to direct the highly anticipated feature film adaptation of “Crying in H Mart,” the best-selling memoir of Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner.
First published in April 2021, “Crying in H Mart” highlights Zauner’s life as a Korean American. The book, which spent 60 weeks on the New York Times best-selling hardcover nonfiction list, opens with Zauner’s tragic memory of losing her mother to pancreatic cancer.
Months after the memoir was published, MGM’s Orion Pictures secured the rights to adapt it into a feature film, with Stacey Sher and Jason Kim to produce. Zauner, who leads the alternative pop band Japanese Breakfast, will provide both the screenplay and soundtrack.
Sharpe, whose directing credits include the TV series “Flowers” (2016-2018) and “Landscapers” (2021), will helm the upcoming film, People reported on Monday.
The 36-year-old Japanese English actor most recently made headlines for his performance as Ethan Spiller in the second season of HBO’s critically acclaimed “The White Lotus.”
“There were lots of things that resonated with me as somebody who is half-Japanese, half-British, spent my childhood in Tokyo,” Sharpe told People of Zauner’s memoir. “Some of the descriptions of being jet-lagged in your family’s kitchen felt very familiar to me.”
Zauner, who is about to embark on a nationwide book tour, told Consequence last year in March that she had finished the screenplay’s first draft.
In a new statement to People, the 33-year-old singer and songwriter said Sharpe’s “sensitivity as a director and an actor, his ability to find humor and grace within the tragedy of the everyday, and his own personal experience, having grown up between two cultures, make[s] him the perfect director for this film.”
Zauner’s first tour stop is in Brooklyn on March 27.
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