Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh shared her insight on the possibility of a sequel for A24’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. A film about a mother who learns about the multiverse through another version of her husband won Best Picture at the 2023 Oscar awards and made a massive sweep during this year’s award season.
Yeoh spoke during the Kering Women in Motion talks during this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where she spoke about her experience as an actress and how times have changed for Asian actors in the industry. Variety reported that Yeoh commented on the possibility of a sequel for the A24 hit. Unfortunately, Yeoh believes that a sequel isn’t something that will be in the works since she believed that the film would just be “doing the same thing.”
“There’s no sequel. We would just be doing the same thing.”
Yeoh talked about what she thought made Everything Everywhere All at Once a success and how a sequel couldn’t recreate it. The actress claimed that a film getting a bigger budget to do more stunts, CGI, and violence wouldn’t make the film any better. What made EEAAO the huge hit we know and love today is its storytelling.
In the film, Evelyn Wang learned that in order to save the multiverse, she needed to save her daughter through love and acceptance. During the final battle, Evelyn used her knowledge of the multiverse to see what made her opponents feel like they were loved and accepted just so she reach her daughter. So it makes sense why Yeoh believes that the story shouldn’t overshadow the action.
“There are mega films that suffer terrible losses, yet they still go and keep doing the same thing. It’s the studios thinking that’s their comfort zone: these movies, the budgets get bigger and they feel more violence, the more CGI will make it better — but the truth of the matter is it’s not. It’s really storytelling. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, even though we traveled the multi-verses, the main theme was love.”
While it’s unfortunate that Everything, Everywhere All at Once part two won’t be a thing, Yeoh added she received a script that didn’t describe her character as “Chinese or Asian looking,” which is a sign of the industry truly moving forward.
