Wong Kar Wai has confirmed that he is creating and producing a TV series, Blossoms Shanghai, based on the award-winning novel Blossoms by Jin Yucheng.
Filmed entirely in Shanghai, where the Hong Kong-based auteur was born, the series is written by award-winning Shanghainese screenwriter, Qin Wen, with cinematographer Peter Pau on board for “visual supervision” and Hu Ge (The Wild Goose Lake) set to star. Wong Kar Wai will direct the first episode.
Wong Kar Wai’s Jet Tone is producing with sister company Block 2 Distribution handling international sales. Tencent Penguin Pictures has acquired rights for China.
Hu Ge plays a self-made millionaire and his journey from being a young opportunist with a troubled past to accumulating dazzling wealth in the city of Shanghai. Set against the backdrop of massive economic growth in the 1990s, the story follows his entanglement with four women who represent the pursuits of his life: adventure, honour, love and innocence.
Wong Kar Wai said: “Jin Yucheng’s landmark novel Blossoms has been the perfect backdrop to visualise and share my love for my birth city. With the series, I would like to invite the audience to immerse in the intrigues of Shanghai and its inhabitants in the early 1990s, an exciting time that paved the way for the prosperity of modern Shanghai.”
Wong Kar Wai is also attached to direct a series, Paradise Guesthouse, for Huanxi Media, but both that project and a planned series for Amazon Studios, Tong Wars, have gone quiet for now.
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