An eight-episode limited drama starring Maya Chen as an architect who returns home to rebuild her family’s theatre. In development at Molang Studio Productions, with the writers’ room now complete.
The series
The Glass Meridian is an eight-episode limited drama about a building and the family who cannot let it go. Maya Chen plays an architect who returns to the city she left years ago to rebuild her family’s theatre — a once-celebrated house now shuttered, weathered and quietly falling apart.
The restoration is the spine of the series. Each episode moves through a stage of the work, from survey and demolition to structure, glass and the first light on a rebuilt stage. As walls come down, so do the stories the family has told about itself, and the architect discovers that some of what was sealed inside the building was sealed there on purpose.
Maya Chen in the lead
Maya Chen has built her career across the West End, Broadway and streaming drama, and has been represented by Molang since 2017. The Glass Meridian is her first lead in a Molang Studio Productions series, and the role draws directly on her stage background: a character who understands theatres as working machines as well as places of memory.
“She knows exactly how to hold up a roof. What she doesn’t know is how to stand in the room where her family fell apart. That’s the role I wanted.” — Maya Chen
Alongside the series, Maya appears as narrator-lead in the Seoul and Los Angeles runs of Velvet Nocturne: Immersive Opera, and production planning will be scheduled around those commitments.
Where it stands
The series is in development. The writers’ room is complete, and the eight-episode arc has been broken from the opening survey of the theatre to its reopening night. The next steps are focused on partners and production planning:
- Platform partner — not yet announced; conversations are ongoing
- Director and wider ensemble — to be announced
- Design — early concept work on the theatre in its ruined, mid-restoration and finished states
- Locations — scouting for a period house that can carry the central set, alongside build options
Milestones beyond the writers’ room are targets and may shift as partners are confirmed. We will update this page as each step is announced.
Making it at Molang
Molang Studio Productions develops series and films that grow out of our roster’s strengths. The Glass Meridian brings together our theatrical expertise and our screen division: the team that represents stage talent in London and Los Angeles has worked with the writers on how a working theatre actually runs — rigging, fly systems, front of house and the rituals of an opening night.
The intention is a drama that feels built rather than staged, with the theatre itself treated as a character that changes over eight episodes. Practical construction will be favored wherever possible, so the cast can work inside a space that genuinely transforms around them.
The tone sits between family drama and slow-burning mystery. Each episode closes on a discovery inside the building — a sealed room, a letter behind plaster, a name scratched into the fly gallery — that pushes the restoration, and the family, somewhere they did not expect to go.
Platform, co-production and financing inquiries can be sent to [email protected]. Press requests regarding the series should go to [email protected].
