Category: News
2023 May 02
Join Simu Liu for McHappy Day on May 10th
![Join Simu Liu for McHappy Day on May 10th](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/rKMrRarahao/maxresdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCIAKENAF8quKqQMa8AEB-AH-CYAC0AWKAgwIABABGHIgWSgrMA8=&rs=AOn4CLC_BgDQfglPk17RbLiDvCx-5g4EKQ")
This May 10th, join Simu Liu and Canadians everywhere in supporting McHappy Day. Every menu item purchased from McDonald’s that day helps support Ronald McDonald House Charities as well as other children’s charities.
2023 Apr 07
Simu Liu Releases Debut Single ‘Don’t’
Simu teased a potential singing career while hosting the 2023 JUNO Awards last month. Today, he dropped his debut single.
SEATTLE TIMES – Failed accountant, stock-photo model, Marvel superhero. And now, actor Simu Liu can add one more line to his résumé: soup dumpling specialist. Last week, Liu joined Bellevue-based MìLà as its chief content officer.
You might know Liu better as Shang-Chi, from the 2021 Marvel film “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” And, you might know MìLà better as Xiao Chi Jie, the direct-to-consumer soup dumpling company that has a storefront in Bellevue’s Soma Towers.
Last week, XCJ founders Caleb Wang and Jennifer Liao rebranded their company as MìLà (the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation for “honey” and “spicy”), and brought Liu to the C-suite.
“I joined MìLà’s executive team because I believe in their business model,” Liu told The Seattle Times in an email. “It all starts with the product — restaurant-quality soup dumplings that are shipped straight to your door in dry ice so they’ll always arrive perfectly frozen.”
Then MìLà, which closed a $22.5 million Series A venture capital funding round in February, dropped a third announcement: Its frozen soup dumplings will be sold in grocery stores starting mid-April. They’ll be at Metropolitan Market, Town & Country and QFC stores in the Pacific Northwest, and Costcos in the Bay Area.
The initial MìLà-Liu connection took place a year ago, with a friend-of-a-friend type of situation. Someone knew someone who knew the Chinese Canadian movie star and reached out: Would he be interested in sampling some pork xiao long bao (soup dumplings)? A package was sent to Liu’s place in Los Angeles, where Liu’s mom and dad were visiting.
Apparently, his parents ate all the soup dumplings and didn’t save him any, according to Liao and Wang.
“When [my parents] raved about the products, I knew I had to get involved somehow,” Liu said.
Liu made an initial angel investment before getting a single taste. Last August, the MìLà co-founders and Liu got together in person for the first time and hit it off.
Burning questions first. What’s Liu like in person?
“Super humble guy,” Wang said. “We ordered pizza, and he was serving us. It felt like we were friends.”
Liu was immediately interested in the business, and not just as a celebrity collaboration.
As the chief content officer, Liu will be working on creative and marketing aspects of the business: driving campaigns, leading strategy behind them, doing ad spots, deciding which stories to tell. Not necessarily day-to-day involvement, but being in regular meetings and texting all the time, Wang said. “We describe it as board-level commitment,” he added.
“I think he has a lot of ideas and the platform to be able to tell the story and work with people to tell the story,” Liao said. “It feels like a really good partnership.”
DEADLINE – DGA Award winner and 5x Emmy nominee Paul Feig has found a stellar trio to lead his new action-comedy Grand Death Lotto for Amazon Studios in John Cena (Peacemaker), Awkwafina (Renfield) and Simu Liu (Barbie).
The film penned by Rob Yescombe (Outside the Wire) is set in a very near future, in which a Grand Lottery has been established in economically challenged California. The only catch? You’ll need to kill the winner before sundown in order to legally claim their prize. New L.A. transplant Katie (Awkwafina) accidentally finds herself with the winning ticket and must join forces with amateur jackpot protector Noel (Cena) to make it to sundown in order to claim her multi-billion dollar prize, all while dealing with Noel’s protection rival Louis Lewis (Liu), who also wants to get her to sundown in order to claim his rich protection commission.
Roth/Kirschenbaum Films’ Joe Roth and Jeff Kirschenbaum will produce the Amazon Original Movie alongside Feigco Entertainment’s Laura Fischer and Feig, with Cena, Zack Roth and Yescombe exec producing. Production kicks off next week. The film will stream on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.
“Grand Death Lotto is the kind of original idea audiences have been craving, and there’s no one better than the endlessly talented Paul Feig to steer the ship,” said Amazon and MGM Studios chief, Jennifer Salke. “We can’t wait to watch John Cena, Awkwafina, and Simu Liu bring this fun, action-packed script to life for our Prime Video customers around the world.”
“I love action comedy and extreme physical comedy and this movie has both in abundance, as well as a boatload of heart and hilarity,” added Feig. “This lotto will make winners of us all.”
Cena leads James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad spin-off series Peacemaker, which set viewership records for HBO Max upon its release last January. He’ll next reprise his Fast & Furious franchise role as Jakob in Uni’s Fast X, which hits theaters May 19. Other upcoming projects for the actor include the Matthew Vaughn-helmed Apple spy thriller Argylle, Prime Video’s Peter Farrelly comedy Ricky Stanicky and 20th/Hulu’s Vacation Friends sequel, Honeymoon Friends.
Awkwafina leads the acclaimed Comedy Central series Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, which will be back for a third season, and will next be seen in Uni’s vampire pic Renfield opposite Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult, as well as Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Additionally, she will star opposite Sandra Oh in an upcoming Untitled Sister Comedy Project for Hulu.
Shang-Chi and Kim’s Convenience breakout Simu Liu stars in Warner Bros’ Barbie from filmmaker Greta Gerwig, which is due for release on July 21. He also stars opposite Hamilton‘s Phillipa Soo in Andy Fickman’s romance One True Loves, which hits theaters on April 7.
Feig most recently co-wrote, directed and produced Netflix’s starry fantasy pic The School for Good and Evil, based on the same-name novel by Soman Chainani, which debuted at #1 on the platform in 88 countries. He’s a writer, EP and director of Fox’s Welcome to Flatch and also exec produces Minx, which has headed to Starz for its second season. Additional films helmed by Feig that have grossed $1B+ worldwide include Bridesmaids, Last Christmas, The Heat, Ghostbusters, Spy and A Simple Favor. And a sequel to the latter is in the works, as we were first to tell you last summer, with Feig directing and producing.
Cena is repped by WME, Intenta Media, and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole; Awkwafina by UTA, Artists First, and Schreck Rose Dapello; Liu by CAA, Authentic Talent & Literary Management, and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern; Feig by CAA and Sloane, Offer; and Yescombe by A3 Artists Agency and Curtis Brown Group.
