JUSTIN LIN talks about how he went in search of the WARRIOR TV series he had heard had been written by Bruce Lee in the 1960s. It has taken a long time to get from great idea, so great other folk arguably borrowed it, to the present day.
He explains how he asked Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee’s daughter, about the script and she knew exactly where in their archive they were. He started reading, they started talking, they approached Jonathan Lin and built the right production team and now they are prepping Season 2…
He talks about how they created the script to encompass the scope, scale and ambition of the original story and real history that was a very different project to Fast & Furious and Star Trek.
WARRIOR is a gritty, action-packed crime drama set during the brutal Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the second half of the 19th century. The series follows Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), a martial arts prodigy who emigrates from China to San Francisco under mysterious circumstances. After proving his worth as a fighter, Ah Sahm becomes a hatchet man for the Hope Wei, one of Chinatown’s most powerful tongs (Chinese organized crime family).
Befriended by Wang Chao (Hoon Lee), a fixer and profiteer in Chinatown, Ah Sahm is taken under the wing of Young Jun (Jason Tobin), the hard-partying son of the Hop Wei’s leader, Father Jun (Perry Yung), who is facing an imminent opium war with a rival tong. As he is indoctrinated in the rules of Chinatown gangs, Ah Sahm wins the confidence of a canny brothel madam, Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng), revealing to her the true intentions of his journey to America.
Over the course of the season, Ah Sahm crosses boundaries inside and outside Chinatown, bringing him into contact with tong rivals Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), a beautiful and ruthless Chinese woman who has achieved a position of power in one of the tongs, and Li Yong (Joe Taslim), a tong lieutenant and Gung Fu master. As violence erupts, Sergeant “Big Bill” O’Hara (Kieran Bew) and Richard Henry Lee (Tom Weston-Jones), a transplanted southerner and rookie cop, are tasked with forming a Chinatown squad.
Meanwhile, working-class leader and tough Irishman Dylan Leary (Dean Jagger) is fighting for all Irish laborers by trying to inflict as much damage as possible on the Chinese immigrants he says are stealing their jobs. Amidst the strife, power-hungry San Francisco Mayor Samuel Blake (Christian McKay) and Deputy Mayor Walter Buckley (Langley Kirkwood), who has his own political aspirations, engage in widespread corruption, while the mayor’s young wife, Penny (Joanna Vanderham), finds herself trapped in a loveless marriage.
The drama series WARRIOR begins its ten-episode season FRIDAY, APRIL 5 (10:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on CINEMAX. Filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, the show is based on the writings of martial arts legend Bruce Lee and is created and executive produced by Jonathan Tropper (CINEMAX’s “Banshee”) under Tropper Ink Productions, executive produced by Justin Lin (director of “Fast & Furious 6”) for Perfect Storm Entertainment and executive produced by Shannon Lee for Bruce Lee Entertainment.
Starring Andrew Koji (“Fast & Furious 6”) as martial arts prodigy Ah Sahm, WARRIOR also features series regulars Kieran Bew (“The Street”), Olivia Cheng (“Marco Polo”), Dianne Doan (“Vikings”), Dean Jagger (HBO’s “Game of Thrones”), Langley Kirkwood (“Invictus”), Hoon Lee (CINEMAX’s “Banshee”), Christian McKay (“Me and Orson Welles”), Joe Taslim (“Fast & Furious 6”), Jason Tobin (“The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift”), Joanna Vanderham (“The Paradise”), Tom Weston-Jones (“Copper”) and Perry Yung (CINEMAX’s “The Knick”).
Later, in search of a woman who left China two years earlier, Ah Sahm crosses paths with Mai Ling (Dianne Doan) and Li Yong (Joe Taslim), followers of the rival tong leader Long Zii (Henry Yuk), who is trying to avoid an opium war with the Hop We – a war that Walter Buckley (Langley Kirkwood), deputy to San Francisco Mayor Samuel Blake (Christian McKay), actively promotes. Meanwhile, after two Chinese laborers are killed by white thugs, police sergeant “Big Bill” O’Hara (Kieran Bew) is tasked with creating a Chinatown squad. Enlisting southern-born cop Richard Henry Lee (Tom Weston-Jones), Bill soon finds that the hostility between the Chinese and white dock workers, whose unofficial leader is Irish tough Dylan Leary (Dean Jagger), is unlikely to end anytime soon.
JUSTIN LIN
Executive Producer Perfect Storm Entertainment
Justin Lin is a Taiwanese American film director whose films have grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. Lin made his solo directorial film debut in 2002 with Better Luck Tomorrow, with Variety listing him as one of the “Top 10 Directors to Watch.” Lin is best known for his work on The Fast and the Furious Franchise,
movies 3-6 (2006-2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016).
His top television projects include directing the first two episodes of the 2015 second season of HBO’s “True Detective” and his work on NBC’s “Community.”
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