The company issued a poster image for the series Wednesday, featuring a man walking out of a dark room into the light through a revolving door. No details have been revealed about cast or director.
Wong has previously called the “Blossoms” film a deeply personal venture as a return to his hometown of Shanghai, and has been working on its script and development for five years.
Both the film and series are adaptations of a 2012 novel of the same name by Jin Yucheng, one of the few authors to write directly in Shanghai dialect (Shanghainese). It tells the story of a young entrepreneur as he seeks wealth, status and romance against a backdrop of China’s 1990s economic boom.
Production is set to begin next year on location in the metropolis. Sources say casting has already been completed, though details have yet to be announced.
Responding to news of the series Wednesday, one fan griped on China’s Twitter-like Weibo: “I first heard about this project when I was a college freshman and rushed off to read the novel. Now I’m nearly done with grad school and I’m still waiting.”
In March, Wong billed the “Blossoms” film as a thematically linked third part to his previous works “In the Mood for Love” and “2046,” although those two films are already tied up in an informal trilogy with the earlier drama “Days of Being Wild.”
The auteur has only directed four feature films since 2000 and none since 2013’s “The Grandmaster,” which grossed $14 million (RMB97.7 million) in China.
He is supposedly at work on a new web series with Huanxi Media called “Paradise Guesthouse,” though no new details of the project have come out since March. Its twelve 45-minute episodes are to tell the story of a Chinese woman running a guesthouse by the sea.
Wong was also previously attached to an Amazon series, called “Tong Wars,” about Chinese immigrants in the U.S. But that project has now been dropped.
Source: Variety By Rebecca Davis