Will Sharpe — the actor and filmmaker who was most recently seen in the latest season of The White Lotus — has been tapped to direct the adaptation of the bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart.
In 2021, MGM’s Orion Pictures picked up the rights to Michelle Zauner’s memoir, with Stacey Sher and Jason Kim on board to produce.
Zauner will pen the script adapting her book that tracks her years growing up as one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Oregon and the months spent at her grandmother’s apartment in Seoul, as well as her career in the East Coast indie music scene and meeting her husband. At the center of her story is Zauner’s relationship with her mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, at which point Zauner reckons with her identity both as a daughter and a Korean American.
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The author is also known for her indie pop music performed under the name Japanese Breakfast, which will provide the soundtrack for the feature film.
“I found that it felt universal in its specificity,” Sharpe told People, whch broke the news. “For me, it would be Japanese food and remembering growing up going to the 7-Elevens and the convenience stores in Tokyo and the dumplings that my mother would make when I was unwell. And I felt like I could recognize that in the descriptions of the Korean porridge or the kimchi and how important that still is to Michelle and how food can carry certain other things within it about your life.”
Sharpe’s directing work includes the Benedict Cumberbatch film The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and the indie Black Pond. He most recently directed episodes of the BAFTA-winning HBO series Landscapers, starring Olivia Colman and David Thewlis. He is repped by UTA, the U.K.’s Independent, and Artists Rights Group.
