An international cast has been set for the Cinemax period crime drama “Warrior,” inspired by original material by martial arts legend Bruce Lee.
Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown following the Civil War, the series follows a young martial arts prodigy — played by Andrew Koji — and a slew of colorful characters who live in the city as the Chinatown Tong Wars run rampant.
Koji is a British actor who has been seen in small roles on TV and film. He will be joined by actors Olivia Cheng, Jason Tobin, Dianne Doan, Kieran Bew, Dean Jagger, Joanna Vanderham, Tom Weston-Jones, Hoon Lee, Joe Taslim, Langley Kirkwood, Christian McKay and Perry Yung.
The series is produced by Justin Lin and Jonathan Topper, with the help of Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee’s daughter. It’s slated for a late 2018/early 2019 release.
Cinemax ordered a pilot for the series back in August last year. The material that inspired the show was written by Bruce Lee in the 1960s, and found by Shannon Lee in 1973 following his death.
“As ‘Warrior’ comes together, I can’t help but feel the pride of correcting a wrong and helping bring Bruce Lee’s dream project to life,” Lin said, according to Deadline. “The martial arts genre a lot of times has been relegated to B-level action. And that’s not something we wanted to do. Going off of Bruce Lee’s original material, we wanted to build something that is character-driven, that has important themes and that also takes place in a part of American history that rarely gets talked about. That to me makes it something you haven’t seen before.”
