How Bruce Lee's lost television concept finally became the gritty drama Warrior
In short: In 1971, Bruce Lee pitched a martial arts series set in the American Old West, only to be rejected by major studios. Decades later, his daughter Shannon Lee and director Justin Lin resurrected the project. The result, Warrior, blends historical reality with high-octane action to explore 1870s San Francisco.
The origins of Warrior trace back to a concept Bruce Lee developed in 1971. Despite his vision for a series centered on a martial artist in the Old West, Lee faced significant hurdles in Hollywood. He was ultimately passed over for the lead role in the series Kung Fu, a decision attributed by his widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, to his ethnicity and accent. While Warner Bros. maintained they were already developing a similar project by writers Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander, the rejection left Lee's original concept dormant for years.
In 2015, the project found new life when Perfect Storm Entertainment and Shannon Lee announced its production for Cinemax. Executive-produced by Lee and Justin Lin, the show finally premiered in 2019. Showrunner Jonathan Tropper designed the series to distill historical events of the late 1870s Tong Wars into a narrative that remains fact-based without functioning as a dry documentary. The series features characters loosely inspired by real historical figures, such as the labor leader Denis Kearney, who serves as the basis for Dylan Leary, and the abolitionist Donaldina Cameron, who inspired the character Nellie Davenport.
The production process was as ambitious as the show's premise. Filming for the first season began in October 2017 at Cape Town Film Studios in South Africa. The series gained critical acclaim, with the second and third seasons achieving 100% approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite its success and a fan-led petition that garnered over 68,000 signatures to save the show, it faced a turbulent path through network changes. After moving from Cinemax to Max, the series was ultimately canceled in December 2023, though it found a wider audience when all three seasons were added to Netflix in early 2024.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Warrior (TV series)
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