Sundance Hit 'Thelma' Gets a Mandarin Remake: Stars Collective Unveils 'Grandma, Please'
Stars Collective has acquired Mandarin-language remake rights to Thelma, the 2024 Sundance breakout that became Magnolia Pictures' highest-grossing narrative feature, and is developing a Mandarin-language adaptation titled Grandma, Please. (Variety)
The original film, written and directed by Josh Margolin and produced by Zurich Avenue and Bandwagon, starred June Squibb — then 93 — in the title role, alongside Parker Posey and Fred Hechinger. Magnolia Pictures released it theatrically in the U.S. It told the story of an elderly woman who, after being swindled by a phone scammer, sets out to track down the culprit herself.
The Mandarin remake spins that premise into something freshly of-its-moment. In Grandma, Please., an 80-year-old grandmother swindled out of her life savings by a scammer using AI to clone her late husband's voice goes after the fraudster on her own — and reconnects with an old flame from 60 years earlier along the way. The AI voice-cloning angle gives the story a contemporary jolt that the phone-scam original did not carry.
Peter Luo is writing the adapted screenplay and producing alongside Stars Collective Co-CEO Nancy Xu and Wayne Wei Jiang. Luo and Xu most recently executive produced The Rip, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, which reached No. 1 on Netflix's global film chart. Xu negotiated the Grandma, Please. deal with Team Thelma LLC, which produced and owns the original film and controls its remake rights. Production is expected to begin in the second half of 2027.
Stars Collective, founded in 2020 by Luo, is a global intellectual-property company with operations in Los Angeles, China and Japan, holding more than 60 original IPs in development. Its recent productions include The Monkey and Playland. The company also holds a 25-year exclusive merchandising licence for The Garfield Movie in Greater China, covering all categories except theme park and stage rights, and has optioned film rights to the nonfiction book Fortunate Sons, developing a movie adaptation with Academy Award winner Donna Gigliotti.
What gives this deal its texture is the company building around it. Stars Collective is constructing a studio focused on generative technology, aimed at bringing Hollywood film-makers together with AI tools. A remake whose plot turns on AI voice-cloning, made by a company betting on generative-tech infrastructure, is an alignment worth noting — the same technology reshaping the industry behind the camera is now being written into the story on screen.
For now, Grandma, Please. sits with a script, a production window, and a piece of IP that already proved it could find an audience. The cameras are not close to rolling. But the chain of decisions — rights acquired, screenplay in progress, talent attached — is the long, unglamorous machinery that puts any film on a screen, and this one has just cleared its first real station.
