Japanese Breakfast‘s Michelle Zauner has announced that the film adaptation of her memoir, Crying In H Mart, will be directed by Will Sharpe.
The book, which arrived in 2021, explores how the death of Zauner’s mother forced a reckoning with the musician’s Korean-American identity.
Zauner dealt with her grief by writing music, and explained in a press release that being creative while “embracing of Korean food and culture” made her feel closer to her late mother.
The musician previously confirmed in 2021 that there would be a film adaptation of her book. Now, she has revealed that Will Sharpe, who plays Ethan Spiller in The White Lotus, will be on hand to direct.
Speaking about Zauner’s memoir, Sharpe told PEOPLE: “There were lots of things that resonated with me as somebody who is half-Japanese, half-British, spent my childhood in Tokyo. Some of the descriptions of being jet-lagged in your family’s kitchen felt very familiar to me.”
Very excited to finally share the brilliant Will Sharpe will be directing the Crying in H Mart adaptation. 🍜
— Japanese Breakfast (@Jbrekkie) March 20, 2023
Zauner added that Sharpe’s “sensitivity as a director and an actor, his ability to find humour 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 previously gave an update on her progress on the film in 2022. Speaking to Consequence, she said: “So I actually just finished the first draft of the screenplay.
“My producers really like it, so hopefully the revision process won’t be too brutal. And yeah, hopefully that will come out sometime in the next couple years. I’m just playing a lot of festivals and being back on the road, and Crying In H Mart the movie [will arrive] maybe sometime in the next few years.”
Zauner’s memoir was developed from an essay she wrote for The New Yorker in August 2018, also titled Crying In H Mart.
Japanese Breakfast are set to play a number of festivals this summer, including Primavera Sound, B-Sides Festival and Roskilde Festival. They’ll then perform several shows in North America as part of Beck and Phoenix’s co-headline ‘Summer Odyssey’ tour. The stint will take place between August 1 and September 10, with Zauner’s band joining them for dates in California, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado.