Blockbusting Musical Visionary Jon Chu
By James Moreau | 25 May, 2025

Director Jon Chu has Hollywood studios lining up for more big noisy hits like Wicked and Crazy Rich Asians.

In Hollywood nothing talks louder about Jon M. Chu than the $2 billion grossed by the 8 feature films he has directed and produced.  The 45-year-old’s visually inventive style is much acclaimed, true, but the studios that greenlight big-budget films are all about the financially inspiring 4 times ROI Chu has averaged with those big budgets.

Chu’s 2018 Crazy Rich Asians was celebrated as the first major Hollywood production since 1993 to cast East Asian leads in a thoroughly modern story line.  Its box office gross was over $239 million — nearly 8 times budget.  At its heart the film was a classic rom-com, charming audiences and winning a Critics' Choice Award for best comedy.  

Perhaps it goes without saying that Chu is in the process of developing Crazy Rich into a stage musical given his directorial wizardry with Wicked, Chu's 2024 big-screen reimagining of the Wizard of Oz musical fantasy. Wicked enriched Universal Pictures with $755 million in box office, becoming the highest-grossing musical film adaptation of all time.  The movie also snagged 10 Oscar nominations, including 2 wins.  Chu himself won Best Director at the Critics' Choice Awards.  A sequel, Wicked: For Good, is set for a November release.

Chu made his directorial debut at the tender age of 28 with Step Up 2: The Streets.  With a budget of $17.5 million the Disney brought in over $150 million, or nearly 9 times budget. The hit established Chu’s knack for building box office with music and dance themes. 

Other Chu musicals include Jem and the Holograms in 2015 and In the Heights in 2021, and two Justin Bieber live concert films, Never Say Never in 2011 and Believe in 2013.

The Chinese American NorCal native earned a BFA in film from USC in 2003.  His student production was the short musical film When the Kids Are Away.  Its energetic numbers and vibrant choreography persuaded the William Morris Agency to sign him.