Write On: Joy Ride's Screenwriters Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong
July 14, 2023
When one woman's business trip turns into a quest to find her family, things get super funny in the new comedy Joy Ride, a raunchy road trip movie with a global spin. The film stars Oscar-nominee Stephanie Hsu, Ashley Park, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu.
Screenwriters Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, who wrote the movie with writer/director Adele Lim, sat down with Final Draft to talk about writing a passion project they never thought would get made. “We were just going to write this dumb thing together and it's going to be just for us and then all of a sudden people are like, oh, we like it we want to make it, we're like, right now?” Hsiao said.
The writers were thrilled, and they had worked together years before on the animated show Family Guy. “We were well versed in being collaborative and working together so when we started writing the spec it was very natural,” says Chevapravatdumrong.
Listen to Final Draft's Write On podcast to hear about the writing process, the laughs and making a movie they never thought would get made.
Joy Ride is out in theaters July 7.
Written by: Sade' Sellers
Sade Sellers is a screenwriter and producer based in Burbank, California. Originally from Michigan’s capital, Lansing, Sade’ has been working in the entertainment industry since 2009. In 2017, Sade’ was a finalist for Tv One’s Screenwriting competition for her teleplay The Replacement. This achievement motivated the network to hire her as a writer for their upcoming movie of the week event, Deadly Dispatch, which premiered on the platform in the summer of 2019. Through that production process, Sade’ met casting director Leah Daniels-Butler who was in the midst of staffing her production company, 1oneninety5. Sade’ then rose to the role of Vice President of Content Acquisitions and Development and spent the next year learning the ecosystem of film and television development from pitching to production. Using that experience, and bound at home due to COVID-19, Sade’ made a return to her first love, screenwriting, utilizing her free time to write new content. www.sadesellers.com- Topics:
- Screenwriting
- Podcast
- Film