Daniel Kwan's Maximalist, Oscar-Winning Cinema
By James Moreau | 08 Jun, 2025

The distinctively bizarre visual flair that bespeaks Daniel Kwan’s roots in music videos has blossomed into award-winning feature films.

Daniel Kwan, 37, is one half of the filmmaking duo Daniels, alongside Daniel Scheinert, who  are best known for the 2022 eccentric genre-bending film Everything Everywhere All at Once. 

The movie was a critical and commercial success, winning three Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay. It also became A24’s highest-grossing film, earning over $143 million at the box office with a modest budget of 25 million.

This was only the second feature film the duo had directed since their debut with the 2016 cult classic dramedy Swiss Army Man.  Kwan won the best dramatic directing award at Sundance where it premiered.

Kwan and Scheinert’s 3rd feature is set to begin production in the summer of 2025 with a scheduled 2026 released date.   They’ve been tightlipped about details.  The budget is reportedly 9-figures which will make it the biggest budget for A24, albeit in collaboration with Universal.

Since 2009 Daniels have accumulated a variety of directorial credits across various forms, including 6 short films, 5 TV episodes, and 15 music videos. 

They earned Grammy nominations for their work on the music video for “Houdini” (2012) by Foster the People and “Turn Down for What” (2013) by DJ Snake and Lil Jon. The latter clearly has a shared visual style with Everything Everywhere All at Once including energetic rapid-fire editing, absurd physical humor, and a maximalist visual overload. The EDM trap music video has reached over 1.2 billion views on YouTube.

The Daniels met while studying Media Arts Production at Emerson College.  Both graduated in 2010. Kwan was raised in central Massachusetts by a Taiwanese mother and a father from Hong Kong.