There was a moment at Everything Everywhere All at Once’s first London screening back in May 2022 where directing duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — who go by the moniker “Daniels” — seemed almost annoyed.
Speaking to a packed-out Ham Yard Theatre (Cate Blanchett and Jonathan Ross were both in the audience — not bad for a mid-week screening of a small budget indie film), they couldn’t quite place why their film has become such a universally acclaimed hit. The week before it had gone to number one at the US box office after six weeks climbing the charts, and had at that point earned them $38.2 million (£31 million) against a $25 million (£20 million) budget. Critics seemed to love it, too, with Vanity Fair’s Maureen Ryan calling it the “role of a lifetime” for Michelle Yeoh who plays the lead character, while the Guardian’s Lisa Wong Macabasco described it as “the year’s wildest movie”. Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, a Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat which is currently being audited by the IRS. That is until she’s sucked into a multiversal battle to prevent a cataclysmic destruction threatened by an evil “everything bagel”.
