Blossoms Shanghai is not Blossoms

First off, Blossoms Shanghai is a TV series – it is not the film Wong had planned under the name Blossoms. The latter has been put on hold due to the pandemic but has not been cancelled. Both works are influenced, however, by the same source – author Jin Yucheng’s award-winning novel Blossoms.

The series is set in 1990s Shanghai

That doesn’t mean that both productions will be the same, though. Set in Shanghai, Jin’s novel focused on two separate time periods – one from the 1960s through to the 1970s and the Cultural Revolution, the other from the 1980s into the 21st century. Wong’s two works will be set in different periods. The TV show is reportedly set in the 1990s, the film in the 1960s.

Wong’s previous TV series pitch has been cancelled

Although Blossoms Shanghai has generated buzz for being Wong’s first foray into television (he will direct the pilot and his company Jet Tone will handle production), this isn’t the director’s first attempt at getting a TV series off the ground.

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 have dealt with the gang warfare that divided the city’s Chinatown at the turn of the 20th century.

No filming was ever carried out for the project and Amazon has canned the series and relinquished its rights to the story.

Hu Ge is the leading man

Aside from the series’ 1990s Shanghai setting, little has been confirmed about Blossoms Shanghai. One of the few details that is solid is that Hu Ge has been cast as the lead. Hu should lend particular credibility to the story as like Wong Kar-wai himself, he was born and grew up in Shanghai, studying at the Shanghai Theatre Academy before making a name for himself in television. Now an established award-winning actor – he has earned plaudits for Nirvana in Fire and The Wild Goose Lake, which competed at Cannes – Hu seems the perfect choice for this particular project.

The series should follow familiar Wongian tropes

If you think a switch to TV might mean Wong would mix up his usual focus on love and romance, think again. Blossoms Shanghai will follow Hu as, according to the official synopsis, an “enigmatic, self-made millionaire, Mr Bao” on “his journey of reinvention from a young opportunist with a troubled past to the heights of the gilded city of Shanghai”. There, amid the economic boom that would transform Shanghai from a dusty art deco museum into a vertical city of countless skyscrapers, Bao encounters four women that “represent the pursuits of his life: adventure, honour, love and innocence”. Given Wong’s often pessimistic view of relationships, we wonder whether Bao will be successful with any of the four.

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