EXCLUSIVE: Chedi Chang, Sophia Xu, yao, Zine Tseng and Owen Teague are set to star in Ang Lee‘s adaptation of Gold Mountain. The film is a Fifth Season, The Ink Factory and Likely Story co-production with shooting currently underway in Northern California. The film is being co-financed by Fifth Season and 127 Wall Productions. Lee is directing the pic from a script adaptation by Pulitzer Prize finalist Chang-Rae Lee.

Based on C. Pam Zhang’s acclaimed novel How Much of These Hills Is Gold, the story is set during the dying embers of the American Gold Rush, “Gold Mountain” tells the story of two orphaned Chinese-American immigrants navigating a brutal, unforgiving Western frontier.

Likely Story’s Anthony Bregman and Peter Cron and The Ink Factory’s co-founders Simon and Stephen Cornwell are producing the pic together with Fifth Season and 127 Wall Productions. Lee and Emmy nominee Gregory Goodman are producing, with David Lee co-producing. The film is represented for sales internationally by FilmNation, across Greater China markets by 127 Wall Productions, and domestically by CAA and Fifth Season.

Gold Mountain is being brought to life by a creative team that includes Academy Award nominee Joshua James Richards as cinematographer, four-time Academy Award nominee Jack Fisk as production designer, Academy Award winner Mychael Danna as composer, two-time Academy Award nominee Tim Squyres as editor, and three-time Emmy winner Avy Kaufman as casting director.

How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a national bestseller which released to critical acclaim. Listed as both a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, the novel was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and also named a Barack Obama Book of the Year. The film follows two newly orphaned Chinese immigrant children as they traverse a hostile California frontier to bury their father and free themselves from their past. They encounter family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different future, as the film reveals the story of love, violence, delusion, and theft that made their journey inevitable.

Lee is represented by CAA, Lee is represented by Blue Marble Management, Chang is represented by DDO Artists Agency and Management Montage, Xu is represented by Paloma, Framework Entertainment, and Schreck Rose Dapello and yao is represented by Stewart Talent, Luber Roklin, and Peikoff Mahan. Tseng is represented by Ziane Hamel at Artist International Group and Goodman Genow Schenkman, Teague is represented by CAA and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.