Wong Kar-Wai set to direct crime drama for Amazon
HONG KONG: Award-winning director Wong Kar-Wai is to direct a crime TV series for Amazon.
Wong, best known for helming classics like In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express, has been hired to make a historical crime drama series called The Tong Wars.
He is following filmmakers like Woody Allen, Barry Jenkins, and others who have made the leap from film to streaming.
Wong is directing The Tong Wars for Amazon, which follows the clashes between Chinese immigrants and Chinatown crime families in 19th century San Francisco, according to Variety.
The hour-long drama series will be directed by Wong and written and executive produced by Paul Attanasio (creator of CBS’s Bull), and will span several years of organised crime war over drugs and prostitution territories.
It’s unknown whether Wong will be directing the entire series, or whether he will have more input in the writing and creative processes.
The project is exciting not just because of Wong’s achievements as an auteur, but because of the subject matter: a gritty crime story centred around Chinese immigrant families.
There have been so few Asiancentric television series on American television, though the numbers of Asian protagonists have been growing on streaming platforms, such as the nowcancelled Marco Polo and Sense8 on Netflix.
Aside from ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, Asian-American stories
It’s clear that Asian, much less Asian-American representation, is still lacking in both Hollywood and the TV landscape, so it’s encouraging that Amazon, Attanasio, and Wong are spearheading this series about Chinese immigrants.
have been all but absent on primetime TV since Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl went off the air in 1995.
And there was the recent resurfacing of the existence of classic film star Anna May Wong’s lost TV series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, which briefly premiered in 1951 before being pulled and is now lost to history.
It’s clear that Asian, much less Asian-American representation, is still lacking in both Hollywood and the TV landscape, so it’s encouraging that Amazon, Attanasio, and Wong are spearheading this series about Chinese immigrants in a time that is politically unsteady for immigrants.