Edko Movies made one of many splashiest bulletins at this 12 months’s Hong Kong FilMart, formally unveiling “Chilly Warfare 1994” – the long-awaited prequel to Hong Kong’s highest-grossing police motion thriller sequence.
Government producer Invoice Kong, producer Ivy Ho and director Longman Leung have been joined on stage by lead actors Terrance Lau, Tse Kwan Ho and Louise Wong. The occasion’s headline second got here with the shock look of Tony Leung Ka-fai – who claimed his fourth Hong Kong Movie Award for Greatest Actor for his work within the unique “Chilly Warfare” – setting off an emotional on-stage reunion with Lau that introduced collectively two generations of the franchise’s iconic M.B. Lee character.
The movie gathers an unprecedented ensemble of 10 Hong Kong Movie Award finest actor winners, anchored by 4 cinematic legends: Chow Yun-fat, Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Louis Koo. The announcement additionally marked the revealing of 12 character posters.
The unique “Chilly Warfare” and its sequel “Chilly Warfare 2” collectively took in over HK$100 million ($12.8 million) on the native field workplace, making the brand new prequel one of the extremely anticipated titles within the Hong Kong pipeline.
Kong framed the undertaking as one thing deeper than a standard franchise extension. “Whereas sequels transfer the story ahead, this prequel goes deeper,” he stated on the occasion. “We’re returning to the very supply of the ‘Chilly Warfare’ universe, revealing how the facility reshuffle in 1994 planted the seeds for the whole lot that adopted.”
Leung stated the 1994 storyline had been quietly embedded within the franchise from its inception. “Beneath the floor calm of that period lay treacherous undercurrents,” he stated. “By means of a grander narrative canvas, audiences will lastly witness the true origins of the ‘Chilly Warfare’ world and uncover solutions to many long-standing mysteries.”
The movie operates throughout two time intervals. In 2017, the disappearance of Hong Kong’s newly appointed Secretary for Safety, M.B. Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai), units the drama in movement, drawing Commissioner of Police Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) and Senior Counsel Oswald Kan (Chow Yun-fat) right into a seek for solutions that leads again to a sealed categorised file from 1994. That flashback thread unfolds in opposition to the twilight of British colonial rule, as the upcoming disbanding of the Royal Hong Kong Police Drive’s Particular Department collides with the kidnapping of a distinguished enterprise tycoon, triggering a harmful inner energy battle.
Daniel Wu heads the 1994 storyline as a calculating and pushed senior police officer, Peter Choi, Deputy Commissioner of Police Operations – his first Hong Kong movie function in six years. Lau portrays his counterpart, the idealistic Performing Chief Superintendent of the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, M.B. Lee. Golden Horse Greatest Actors Wu Kang Ren and Tse Kwan Ho play the formidable Poon patriarch and son. Louise Wong takes on the function of triad chief Jodie Yuen, with Fish Liew enjoying a central determine inside the Poon household. Louis Koo enters the franchise within the 2017 thread as Chief Government-elect Adrian Yip Shun-ting.
The worldwide solid consists of Aidan Gillen enjoying the MI6 Head of Asia-Pacific and Hugh Bonneville solid as a British Cupboard Minister.
“Chilly Warfare 1994” is produced by Kong and Ho, written and directed by Leung, and is ready to debut later this 12 months.
