Wong Kar-wai’s filmmaking stalls, with Amazon series nixed and Shanghai-set Blossom film and series on hold
- Hong Kong director’s hotly anticipated Amazon series Tong Wars has been ‘cancelled for some time’, sources say, and never even began filming
- Shooting in China of Wong’s film and series Blossoms, a follow-up to In The Mood For Love, has been delayed, like all shoots there, by coronavirus outbreak
Hotly anticipated projects from award-winning Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai have either been cancelled or delayed.
Sources with ties to the director say his Amazon television show Tong Wars has been “cancelled for some time” and another project, a Chinese-language feature film and series, Blossoms, has been postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Neither Amazon or Hong Kong’s Jet Tone films, which produces Wong’s films, have responded to requests for comment, but it appears both projects have stalled.
Wong is Hong Kong’s most renowned living filmmaker. Through films such as Chungking Express (1994) and In the Mood for Love (2000), he created his own aesthetic and put a new brand of Hong Kong movie on the map for a generation of cinephiles.
In September 2017, Wong signed a deal with Amazon to produce a series set in 19th century San Francisco called Tong Wars. The series would be filmed in the Californian city and would deal with the gang wars that tore apart its Chinatown at the turn of the 20th century.
No filming was ever carried out for the project, it has been reported, and it now appears Amazon has nixed the series without announcing its cancellation. A spokesman did confirm to Screen Daily that the company had relinquished its rights to the story.