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Collin Chou, best known for his role as Seraph from The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, will play Edwin Chiu in the Netflix film, The Half of It, written and directed by Alice Wu. The project, the follow up to Wu’s 2004 film, Saving Face, the pic navigates the struggles of an immigrant family against the backdrop of an Americana teenage angst romantic comedy. The plot is said to be a modern day Cyrano-meets-Pygmalion centered on a shy, introverted, Chinese-American, straight-a student who finds herself helping the school jock woo the girl they both secretly love. In the process, each teaches the other about the nature of love as they find a connection in the most unlikely of places. Chou’s Edwin Chiu is struggling immigrant father of Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis) who was a highly educated engineer whose promising career was derailed by his poor English skills when he moved to America.

Netflix has started production on The Half of It, writer-director Alice Wu’s follow-up to her 2004 feature film Saving Face. The new movie joins Netflix’s expanding roster of live-action teen-focused films like Tall Girl and A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting.

As the follow-up to the Sony Pictures Classics release Saving Face, The Half of It is described by Netflix as “a modern day Cyrano-meets-Pygmalion” in which “a shy, introverted, Chinese-American, straight-a student finds herself helping the school jock woo the girl they both secretly love. In the process, each teaches the other about the nature of love as they find connection in the most unlikely of places.”

The cast includes Leah Lewis (Charmed) as Ellie Chu; Daniel Diemer (Sacred Lies) as Paul Munksy; Alexxis Lemire (The Other Mother) as Aster Flores; Becky Ann Baker (Girls) as Mrs. Geselschap; Catherine Curtin (Orange is the New Black) as Colleen Munsky,...