Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: crouching tiger hidden dragon

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon TV Series in Development at Amazon

Jason Ning and Ronald D. Moore are developing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a television series for Sony and Amazon's Prime Video.

Because Hollywood and the streaming services will leave no IP alone, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is currently being developed as a television series by Jason Ning and Ronald D. Moore for Prime Video and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Yes, we're sure you're excited by this news. Whoop-de-doo. The original Oscar-winning 2000 feature film, directed by Ang Lee, introduced Western mainstream audiences to the wuxia genre for the first time. Even martial arts movie fans have followed them since the 1960s.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon follows Shu Lien and Mu Bai, two star-crossed warriors (played by Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat in the movie), as they struggle between forbidden love and the pull of modernity — caught between preserving their way of life or embracing a future together. It was an adaptation of a section of the Crane-Iron Pentalogy five-book series by Wang Dulu, which ran for multiple volumes and totaled over a thousand pages as it covered a multigenerational martial arts saga. The books were published between 1938 and 1944 before Jin Yong began his career as the most popular and most widely adapted author of wuxia fiction. Wang published over 90 novels between 1925 and 1949. Unfortunately, none of his novels are translated into English.

The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon TV series began development a few years ago when Sony regained the rights to the books through a first-look deal with Vertigo and tapped Ning to adapt it as part of an overall deal. Moore came on board last year after returning to Sony TV with his new overall deal. The martial arts saga is one of two major Sony IP-based TV series projects Moore is developing for Sony and Prime Video next to his adaptation of the Sony Playstation exclusive video game God of War. Executive producing the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon series are Ning, Moore and Maril Davis of Tall Ship Productions, Johnny Levin, Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment, as well as Hong Wang and Qin Wang for the Wang Dulu Estate. Ying Lou is co-executive producing. Hopefully, the series will avoid an American perspective, which would risk exoticizing the Chinese cultural details rather than offering actual authenticity.

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