David Meltzer
In recent years, Asian content has captured the global imagination in ways once thought impossible. Korean dramas have transformed streaming platforms into cultural bridges, Parasite broke the Oscar ceiling, and Squid Game became a worldwide phenomenon. These works proved something powerful: Asian stories are not “niche” or confined to regional audiences they are universal, resonating with viewers across continents. Yet, for all the progress in film and television, literature from Asian voices remains underexplored in Hollywood’s adaptation pipeline.
The time for that shift is now.
One striking example is the Vice and Virtue trilogy by Yarro Rai, an Indian-Nepali writer whose bold storytelling blends the grit of political noir with the intimacy of moral reckoning. Across three published seasons, Rai crafts a sweeping narrative where power, corruption, and family loyalty collide, but unlike many closed trilogies, Vice and Virtue is still unfolding. The third season leaves audiences at the edge with characters facing impossible choices, moral decay, and the haunting sense that the story’s most explosive turns are yet to come.
What makes Rai’s work especially timely is not simply its South Asian origins but its universality. Much like Squid Game transcended Korea by striking chords of inequality and survival, Vice and Virtue digs into questions of identity, morality, and ambition that are instantly recognizable to anyone, regardless of geography. It’s the kind of layered, serialized storytelling Hollywood often craves but rarely finds outside Western canon.
And Rai is not alone. Writers like Han Kang, whose The Vegetarian shocked and enthralled readers worldwide, have demonstrated the sheer depth and originality of contemporary Asian literature. These works challenge form, disturb comfort, and ask questions that refuse easy answers. They are not “diverse” for the sake of diversity they are compelling, urgent stories that happen to be Asian in origin.
Hollywood has always been in search of the “next big thing.” The truth is, it has already arrived. From Seoul to Kathmandu to Mumbai, writers are producing works that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any prestige drama or blockbuster adaptation. The global audience is not only ready but eager.
To overlook them now would be to miss the same wave that once carried Parasite and Squid Game into history. To embrace them would be to recognize what should have been clear all along: that great stories are borderless.
The next Succession, the next Breaking Bad, the next cultural juggernaut could very well be written by an Asian author. And in the case of Vice and Virtue, it already has been waiting for Hollywood to take notice.
