At the 95th annual Academy Awards on Sunday, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert-directed film Everything Everywhere All At Once was awarded Best Picture, closing out the ceremony. The film, which starred Ke Huy Quan and Harrison Ford, was celebrated by its costar when it won the award.
Ford presented the cast and directors with the award and embraced Quan when he went onstage. An excited Quan jumped up and down before appearing to happily give Ford a kiss on the cheek and a big hug. Quan and Ford have kept in touch ever since they starred together in the Indiana Jones Movie!
Accepting the award, film producer Jonathan Wang praised the cast behind him and thanked production company A24. Becoming speechless, he confessed, “It’s intimidating speaking up here, let me tell you that. I never thought I would get to say this so I say it with one voice with all these people: Thank you to the Academy.”
He thanked his “brilliant and beautiful wife Anni” and dedicated the award to his father, who “died young.”
“He’s so proud of me, not because of this but because we made this movie with what he taught me to do, which is no person is more important than profits,” he said through tears.
Kwan briefly thanked his peers in the room, adding, “I think one of the things I realized growing up is one of the best things we can do for each other is sheltering each other from the chaos of this crazy world we live in.”
The award marked the seventh of the evening for the film, which had 11 total nominations. Becoming the most-nominated film of the year, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a wild sci-fi film about an immigrant woman named Evelyn Wang (Yeoh), struggling to keep her family afloat while running a laundromat, and is tasked with saving the world — jumping between alternate realities and meeting friends and foes along the way.
The indie film went on to become distribution company A24’s highest-grossing release after it hit theaters last March, surpassing other top money-makers from the production company like Uncut Gems (2019) and 2018’s Hereditary.
Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known professionally as the Daniels, spoke to Vulture about Everything Everywhere — and Kwan admitted, “This Oscars stuff is horrifying to me.” While promoting the film in 2022, Curtis said on The Talk, “I think there’s a touching story at the heart of everything. And in the best of these sort of sci-fi multiverse movies, if they don’t touch you, the audience leaves sort of inured.”
