Pearl Studio Doubles Down on Stories That Will Appeal to Chinese and International Crowds

Peilin Chou with Dreamworks

The project with Netflix, “Over the Moon,” will be Pearl’s first feature developed post-ODW and is scheduled for delivery in 2020. How that film turns out will be “our true report card,” Chou says — more so than “Abominable,” which began under ODW and was produced mostly at DreamWorks in Glendale, Calif. “Over the Moon” is a musical adventure about a girl who builds a rocket in hopes of meeting Chang’e, a goddess in Chinese mythology who lives on the moon. Sony Pictures Imageworks is making the movie in Vancouver.

The idea was pitched by producer Janet Yang in 2015, at the first of what has become an annual brainstorming event. A significant part of Pearl’s creative process involves flying in creative luminaries from the U.S., most of them of Asian descent, for its Brain Trust Summit, a three-day story-generating workshop. Last December, it brought comedian Margaret Cho, YA author Jenny Han (“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”) and “Lost” actor Daniel Dae Kim, among others, to Shanghai to come up with movie ideas. Past participants have included “Crazy Rich Asians” screenwriter Adele Lim and author Junot Díaz. Read more