How Cape Town made Bruce Lee’s dream come true
Warrior is based on a concept that Bruce Lee pitched to Hollywood in 1971. His pitch was unsuccessful – the studio execs didn’t think they could sell an Asian leading man – and the legendary martial arts icon died two years later, his vision unfulfilled.
Bruce’s daughter, Shannon Lee, finally brought it to life in 2019, executive producing Warrior alongside the likes of The Fast and The Furious director Justin Lin and series creator Jonathan Tropper, who brought us the action drama Banshee.
Set during the Californian Tong Wars of the 1800s, the story centres on Chinese immigrant and martial arts prodigy Ah Sahm, who goes to San Francisco to search for his sister, only to find himself sold to one of the most powerful tongs (gangs) in Chinatown.
Season two has a 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and was up for Best Action Series and Best Actor at the 2021 Critics Choice Super Awards, as well as for a 2021 Visual Effects Society Award.
Inverse hailed Warrior as “the most underrated action series of the century”, while Vox proclaimed: “Warrior feels like if Peaky Blinders starred Bruce Lee and was set in 1870s Chinatown. It’s great.”
Andrew Koji leads the ensemble cast as Ah Sahm, the role Bruce Lee envisioned for himself.
Olivia Cheng, Jason Tobin, Dianne Doan and Hoon Lee also star, along with SA’s own Langley Kirkwood, whose role as Machiavellian deputy mayor Buckley was highlighted as one of the show’s standout characters by The Ringer.
The SA cast also includes Robert Hobbs Jacques Bessenger, Nicholas Pauling, Emily Child, David Butler and Kenneth Fok.
Shot at Cape Town Film Studios with Moonlighting, both seasons of Warrior relied on SA’s worldclass crews, such as two-time Emmy-nominated costume designer Diana Cilliers (Roots, The Girl, District 9), who worked with Moira Anne Meyer (The Hurt Locker); Safta-nominated makeup supervisor Marli Kruger (The Watch); and special effects supervisor Mickey Kirsten (Tenet, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Unknown).
The new season was filmed entirely by three SA cinematographers: Michael Snyman, Trevor Brown and Giulio Biccari.
HBO’s corporate reshuffle last year – and the news that subsidiary network Cinemax will no longer produce original content – had fans worried for Warrior’s future, with good reason in the current climate.
Happily, last month HBO Max renewed the hit show for a third season.
Lee welcomed the news, saying: “I just know that my father is grinning right now to see this show he dreamed of so long ago continuing to beat the odds.”
And it’s especially good news for SA’s pandemic-ravaged film industry, because Tropper has hinted they’ll be coming back to shoot here.
“Our Chinatown backlot is still standing in Cape Town,” Tropper said in a recent interview with Inverse. “It will need significant refurbishment, but it’s there.”
And the best news yet? Tropper says Warrior has plans for stories beyond season three, saying it would be “way too much work to pull this all back together for one season”.
● Watch Warrior on Showmax.