If there is one summer movie that I bet you’ll love if you just give it a chance, it’s The Farewell, from writer-director Lulu Wang.  It stars Awkwafina as a young Chinese-American woman who travels to China to say goodbye to her beloved grandmother who has recently been diagnosed with late-stage cancer, though her family hasn’t told her yet.  It’s a wonderful film and its themes of familiar love, duty and acceptance are universal.  I think it’s going to be a legitimate contender this awards season, and like The Rider writer-director Chloe Zhao, Wang could be the next indie filmmaker drafted by Marvel or another major studio. 

But not just yet. 

Instead, Wang has signed on to write and direct an adaptation of Alexander Weinstein‘s short story collection Children of the New World, it was announced Monday.  The project — Wang’s third feature, following The Farewell and her 2014 debut Posthumous starring Jack Huston and Brit Marling — reunites her with Peter Saraf‘s Big Beach, which also produced The Farewell. 

In a press release, Wang said that her next film will “continue exploring the evolving dynamics of family.”  Well, let’s do some exploration of our own! 

According to Amazon, the mind-bending short story collection “uses science fiction to illustrate what tomorrow might look like.  Akin to a literary Black Mirror, each story powerfully illustrates how technology impacts our lives and forces us to confront what it means to be human.”  One story involves a creator of virtual memories who struggles to distinguish real-life experience from manufactured events, while another story follows a childless couple who conceive two children in an online world, only for their imagined life to be infected by a computer virus. 

Saraf and Dani Melia will produce Children of the New World for Big Beach along with Justin Lothrop of Votiv, whose Brent Stiefel will executive produce. “ We had an incredible experience collaborating with Lulu Wang on The Farewell and are thrilled to be making another film with this visionary director, this time working alongside Votiv and exploring a completely different space and genre,” Melia said in a statement. 

Big Beach is the company behind Starz’s Vida and the Facebook Watch series Sorry For Your Loss starring Elizabeth Olsen, as well as the upcoming Sony movie It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which stars Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers.  Votiv’s credits include the acclaimed abortion comedy Obvious Child starring Jenny Slate. 

Wang is represented by UTA and Circle of Confusion, and A24 will release The Farewell in theaters this Friday.  Don’t miss it!