Michelle Yeoh says that ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ will not have a sequel

Michelle Yeoh has enjoyed a year of success following the release of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’, winning her first Oscar after a four-decade-long career.

And despite the movie taking home seven Oscars this year, signaling that a sequel could be successful, Yeoh says that a sequel is out of the question.

“We would just be doing the same thing,” she told Variety at the Kering Women in Motion talks at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

‘Everything Everywhere’ signified audiences are hungry for diverse stories

Yeoh, however, notes that the success of ‘Everything Everywhere’ shows how important new stories are, told from diverse perspectives, rather than remakes and sequels.

“It’s just a matter of pushing the envelope and refusing to say that this is the ‘normal way.’ In the ‘normal way,’ would ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ would have been nominated? Chances are no, five to ten years ago,” she said.

“There are mega films that suffer terrible losses, yet they still go and keep doing the same thing,” she continued.

“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.”

A win for Asian representation in the movie industry

And aside from a fresh new story, ‘Everything Everywhere’ also features an entirely Asian cast, which she says follows the success of her previous movie ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, which resulted in changes in how Asian actors are cast.

“The best thing that has happened is I receive a script that doesn’t describe the character as a Chinese or Asian-looking person.

“We are actors. We are supposed to act. We are supposed to step into roles that are given to us and do our job as best we can. That, for me, is the biggest step forward.”

On becoming the first Asian person to win Best Actress at the Oscars, and the second woman of color, after Halle Berry in 2002, Yeoh says, “The most important thing it has done is it has generated such pride with our people.”

She continued, “The day I won, I honestly heard the roar of joy that came from that corner of the world. It’s been slowly moving in that way and this has pushed the door open, and it’s not shutting behind me.”