LOS ANGELES • It is rich pickings for romantic comedy-drama Crazy Rich Asians. The movie, starring Constance Wu and Henry Golding, collected more than US$21 million (S$28.8 million) in three days after opening last Wednesday in the United States.

Joy Luck Club (1993), the highest-grossing, Asian-centric studio movie to date, earned US$33 million in its entire run, a figure Crazy Rich Asians is expected to eclipse in its five-day opening weekend.

Not since Disney's Buena Vista release of Joy Luck Club has a Hollywood studio produced an English-language film with an all-Asian cast.

The Warner Bros film's producer, John Penotti, told Xinhua: "This is a film we knew had to be made and made right."

Ms Angie Han, deputy entertainment editor at Mashable.com, said: "It could remind the industry that it's not just superheroes in Spandex that can get people in seats."

The New York Times called the film, with many scenes shot in Singapore, "an unabashed celebration of luxury and money, with hints of class conflict that have more to do with aspiration than envy or anger, set in an Asia miraculously free of history or politics".

Schmooze.com pointed out that the film broke the mould by casting stunningly attractive Asian men.

The University of Southern California's Annenberg Report on diversity in entertainment in 2016, surveying more than 400 films and TV shows, found that "at least half or more of all cinematic, television or streaming stories fail to portray one speaking or named Asian or Asian American on screen".

Kevin Kwan, who authored the book of the same name and is an executive producer on Crazy Rich Asians, said: "But this is what happens - We pave the way, we create new narratives, we shatter the stereotypes and we move forward."