Ang Lee hasn't directed a film since February 8, 2025, when he received the Directors Guild of America's Lifetime Achievement Award. Now, nearly half a year later, the two-time Oscar winner is prepping to return behind the camera with Old Gold Mountain, a sweeping adaptation of C. Pam Zhang's 2020 debut, How Much of These Hills Is Gold.
The Heart of the Story
Lucy and Sam — orphaned immigrant siblings — trek across a harsh, mythic American West, hauling their father's body. Along their surreal path, they confront giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of racial exclusion. That tension between “haunting beauty” and “unforgiving expanse” pretty much sums up why Ang Lee is a perfect fit.
Why Lee?
Think back to Life of Pi or Brokeback Mountain: visuals that linger, emotion that seeps beneath the bones. With three-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki aboard, this is shaping up to be a lyrical, visceral meditation on belonging.
The Build-Up
- Script: Korean-American playwright Hansol Jung (Pachinko) penned the screenplay.
- Cast: Rumors point to Fala Chen joining the project—possibly in a poignant maternal role—though that's unconfirmed. No key casting has been officially announced jaynestars.com.
- Production kick-off: Cameras roll in Northern California on August 2, 2025.
Poetic Western or Revisionist Vision?
Western mythology rarely centers on immigrants, yet here Zhang's novel (Booker-nominated, 2020) does just that, reframing the frontier through displacement, identity, memory and grief. In the era of revisionist Westerns, Lee isn't just adding to the genre — he may be redefining it.
What This Means For Lee
It's been six years since Gemini Man (2019) — a film that flopped hard. But this isn't a CGI-heavy thriller or superhero romp. It's raw, intimate, and deeply emotional — the terrain where Lee excels. This feels like a return to form, and possibly, an Oscar-hunting vehicle.
The Takeaway
This August marks the start of something unique: a lyrical immigrant Western, helmed by one of cinema's great visual storytellers, with a script that resonates in today's fractured world. No release date yet, no festival premiere locked in — just the promise of a film steeped in haunting landscapes and fractured souls.
looking forward to it. Never seen a western film thru the eyes of Chinese immigrants.