The feature film adaptation of Japanese Breakfast’s memoir Crying In H Mart has been put “on pause” for the foreseeable future.
The singer – real name Michelle Zauner – had written the screenplay for the movie herself, based on her 2021 memoir, which itself was an expansion of an essay published in the New Yorker.
The film was set to be directed by The White Lotus star Will Sharpe and was going to detail Zauner’s experience growing up as a Korean-American and reckoning with her identity following the loss of her mother.
Now, though, Zauner has confirmed that progress is no longer being made on the film. Speaking to SSENSE, she said: “Well, it’s on pause. There were issues with the Hollywood strikes, and the director stepped away from the project.”
“I spent a year working on the screenplay, which was a tough but rewarding process. I still have faith it will get made someday, but it’s not happening anytime soon. Right now, I’m focusing on other creative projects, so the film will have to wait.”
Zauner announced a casting call for the role of herself in May 2023, a year after saying: “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.”
Japanese Breakfast will release fourth studio album ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)’ on March 21 via Dead Oceans (pre-order/pre-save here), and earlier this month Zauner shared the lead single ‘Orlando In Love’ (listen above).
Produced by Grammy-Award winner Blake Mills (Sky Ferreira, Fiona Apple), the record sees the group dive into a deeper, moodier sound, creating what a press release calls “an artistic statement of purpose: a mature, intricate, contemplative work that conjures the romantic thrill of a gothic novel”.
Japanese Breakfast have also announced their 2025 US, UK and European tour, which will kick off at Coachella, followed by stops in Austin, Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, Boston, Brooklyn and more before heading over to Europe and the UK. The tour will close out with a return to the US and wrap up at The Armory in Minneapolis on September 9.
Check out a full list of tour dates here. Visit here to purchase US tickets and here for UK and European tickets.
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