One of the year’s most talked about films is A24’s sleeper hit Everything Everywhere All at Once. Though Marvel Studios had been exploring their own multiverse with much bigger budgets through movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, there was something about Everything Everywhere All at Once, with a budget of less than $15 million, that really connected with viewers. The movie grossed over $100 million to become A24’s highest-earning film at the box office, and better yet, it was met with universal praise, boasting a 95% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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But Everything Everywhere All at Once could have been a very different movie if the original casting choice for the lead character had been able to do the film. In a new story about the making of the movie at THR, the filmmakers, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, spoke about how Jackie Chan was originally envisioned to play the protagonist with Michelle Yeoh in a supporting role as his wife. Though Chan was unavailable for the role, the duo realized the potential they had with Yeoh to make the story work, ultimately shifting her Evelyn Wang character into the lead. Ke Huy Quan was then cast in a supporting role as Evelyn’s husband, Waymond.

“You never know with the alchemy of storytelling how things will fall,” Kwan says of how everything worked out for the better with the casting change. “Swapping the characters made it more personal, which gave us a wealth of experience to imbue into the story. Suddenly it became a lot easier to write and imagine.”

Michelle Yeoh Wanted to Be Challenged By Playing Evelyn Wang

     A24

Michelle Yeoh also touched on what it was like to step into the role of the protagonist for such a unique story. Playing Evelyn, and her many variations, was unlike anything she’s ever done before with her career. She saw the opportunity as challenging, and she realized that it would certainly be that after checking out the screenplay.

“What I need is to be challenged, to have directors look at me in a different way,” Yeoh noted. “Over the years, my [characters] have been strong, held together. So when I read the script, I was like, ‘Whoa, what?'"

Some other big names were added to the cast, joining Quan in serving as strong supporting cast members. That includes James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, Jenny Slate, and Harry Shum Jr. However the film came together, it would seem that most viewers agree that it couldn’t have been any better without having this cast in place.