Michelle Zauner’s had a huge year. Not only did she finally become “Jimmy Fallon Big,” but her debut memoir, Crying In H-Mart, became a New York Times Best Seller. Today, Zauner revealed some more major news: Crying In H-Mart is set to become a movie. MGM’s Orion Pictures acquired the rights to the adaptation. It’ll be produced by Stacey Sher—who’s produced major films like Matilda, Erin Brockovich, and Django Unchained—and South Korean filmmaker Jason Kim (Midnight Runners, The Divine Fury). Japanese Breakfast is also doing the soundtrack for the film. No director or screenwriter has been attached to the project yet.
“It is a surreal thrill to have the opportunity to memorialize my mother in film, and I consider it of the highest honor to pursue that task alongside creative luminaries such as Stacey Sher, Jason Kim and Orion Pictures,” says Zauner in a press release.
Zauner has found plenty of success as a musician with Japanese Breakfast, but her memoir introduced her work to a brand new audience, as she told the story of her dynamic with her South Korean mother, Chongmi, who died of cancer in 2014. As a biracial woman, Zauner details her relationship with her Korean culture, and the immense grief that followed her mother’s passing. Before writing her memoir, Zauner penned an essay that shares its title for The New Yorker in 2018, that went viral.
In a recent interview with The A.V. Club, the musician and author noted how much she struggled to get the essay published. “‘Crying In H-Mart,’ the [New Yorker] essay that came before Crying In H-Mart, I tried to give that essay away for free to so many food publications, and applied to maybe like 50 literary contests without an entry fee, and no one wanted it, and I was rejected so much,” she said. Thankfully, Zauner’s perseverance paid off, and we’ll soon get to see her story on the big screen.