Jon M. Chu

Jon M. Chu is the youngest of five children of Chinese immigrants and grew up in Los Altos, California. His parents met in the Bay Area, settled in Los Altos, and in 1970 opened the Chinese restaurant Chef Chu’s, which grew with Silicon Valley into a place frequented by local families and tech workers; as a child he did his homework there, and tech customers who heard he loved making films gave him a PowerBook Duo laptop, a Macintosh Quadra computer, and editing software.⁠[1][2][3][3][4][4][4]

He recalls that in the summer of 1985, at age five, he went to a movie theater for the first time, in Mountain View, to see Steven Spielberg’s E.T., and that Spielberg’s films became the standard against which he judged every other film experience. In fifth grade his mother gave him a video camera to record family vacations, but he used it instead to make science fiction thrillers and murder mysteries starring his siblings; around 1991 he cut family vacation footage into a film that made his parents cry, which he said was because they saw their family on screen as a normal family that fit in.⁠[5][5][5][1][3][3]

Chu attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he won awards including the Jack Nicholson Award, the Princess Grace Award, and the Kodak Student Filmmaker Award. In 2002, his student short Gwai Lo: The Little Foreigner received an honorable mention in the Asian American category of the Directors Guild of America’s West Coast Student Filmmakers Awards.⁠[1][6]

He recalls that at a USC screening of a classmate’s short, an Asian man in the film was played as a joke and the audience laughed, which made him realize for the first time how Asian men were stereotyped in America; he called it an “awakening.” After graduating he stayed an extra semester to make the musical short When the Kids Are Away, imagining what mothers do after their children leave for school; for it, he and a collaborator persuaded Panavision to lend them the F900 high-definition digital camera, which had just been used to shoot a Star Wars prequel.⁠[4][4][5][5][5][5]

When the Kids Are Away caught Spielberg’s attention, and on March 3, 2003, the 23-year-old Chu met him at Amblin Entertainment on the Universal lot; Spielberg said that after seeing the film’s family scenes he immediately wanted his wife, Kate Capshaw, to see it. During the meeting Chu mentioned Moxie, a modern-day musical retelling of Romeo and Juliet that his friends were developing, and secured a second meeting, with the plan that it would be made by DreamWorks with Spielberg producing. He signed with the William Morris Agency.⁠[1][5][5][5][5][5][5]

He then pitched Lucy Fisher and Doug Wick of Red Wagon Productions and Columbia Pictures chief Amy Pascal on adapting the musical Bye Bye Birdie as a contemporary story about celebrity and fame, and Columbia promptly decided he would direct it; on April 10, 2003, he appeared on the covers of The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He recalls that Columbia, determined to launch him before Spielberg could, offered generous terms including a “pay-or-play” clause (paying him even if the film was not made). In August 2003, Columbia and Red Wagon hired Stuart Blumberg to write the script; the film was to be the 23-year-old Chu’s feature debut and Columbia’s first musical in three decades, and his treatment used a contemporary setting with an urban, hip-hop feel.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][7][7][7]

Bye Bye Birdie was never made, and a line in Variety read, “This kid didn’t stay in the picture.” For years afterward he, like other young directors, kept pitching and being rejected, and eventually became Hollywood’s go-to director for sequels.⁠[4][4][4][4]

In 2008, Chu made his feature directing debut with Step Up 2: The Streets, the sequel to the dance film Step Up, and went on to direct Step Up 3D (2010), which became the highest-grossing film in the franchise worldwide.⁠[1]

In 2010–2011, he created, wrote, and co-produced the dance web series The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (LXD), which won Advertising Age’s Media Vanguard Award for Outstanding Web Series, and he received the 2011 Digital Pioneer Emmy Award for it. In 2011, he directed Justin Bieber’s concert documentary Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.⁠[1][1][1]

In July 2012, Chu entered talks with Sony Pictures and Escape Artists to direct Masters of the Universe, a live-action film based on the Mattel toy line; at the time he was in the middle of a 3D conversion on the G.I. Joe sequel.⁠[8][8]

In 2013, his action film G.I. Joe: Retaliation was released. In October of that year, Virgin Produced, Richard Branson’s entertainment arm, had him direct the musical in-flight safety video VX Safety Dance for Virgin America, which aired on flights from November and was also released on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry, Google PlayGoogle PlayGoogle Play is a digital content distribution service operated by Google, centered on the Google Play Store, the app store for Android devices. Its predecessor, Android Market, launched in October 2008 alongside the first Android phone, and in March 2012 it merged with Google Music and the Google eBookstore and was renamed Google Play. As the main distribution channel for Android apps, its commissions, billing rules, and review practices have drawn controversy, including the Epic Games antitrust lawsuit in the United States and penalties under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.Open the full entry, and digital billboards in Times Square.⁠[1][9][9][9]

Jem and the Holograms (2015) was the low point of his career: it scored just 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, Universal pulled it from more than 2,000 screens in its second week, and it earned only $2.3 million worldwide. He later said he told himself afterward not to let fear change his choices, saying “fear is a destruction of creativity.”⁠[10][10][10]

In 2016, he directed the magic-themed sequel Now You See Me 2, written by Ed Solomon and Peter ChiarelliPeter ChiarelliPeter Chiarelli (often credited as Pete Chiarelli) is an American screenwriter and producer who rose to prominence with his screenplay for the 2009 romantic comedy The Proposal and co-wrote the screenplay of the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians with Adele Lim; before turning to screenwriting, he spent more than a decade in film producing and development in Los Angeles.Open the full entry; nearly two months before its release, Lionsgate signed him to direct a third installment.⁠[11][11]

Chu said online campaigns such as #WhitewashedOut and #StarringJohnCho, which criticized the lack of Asian faces in American films, made him realize that by not doing anything to change the situation he was part of the problem. To win the job of directing Crazy Rich Asians, based on Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel, he gave producers Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson a presentation full of personal background and family stories, and pitched the studio together with Kwan; only after taking the job did he learn that his cousin was best friends with Kwan and that “the cousin who makes movies” in the book was him.⁠[10][10][10][4][10][10]

In October 2016, Warner Bros. acquired distribution rights to the film, which was being developed by Color Force and Ivanhoe Pictures with Chu directing and an entirely Asian cast planned; after joining, he brought in television writer Adele Lim to write the screenplay with Peter Chiarelli, who had been hired earlier.⁠[12][12][12][13]

In May 2018, after a bidding war among nearly all the major studios, the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights landed at Warner Bros., to be directed by Chu, who had been attached to the project since its Weinstein Co. days.⁠[14][14]