A decade after The Grandmaster, the wait for Wong Kar-wai’s next project has been lengthy, with his long-gestating Blossoms Shanghai first announced nearly five years ago. Now, after three years of filming, the series launches next week on China’s Tencent Video. Comprising 30 episodes of around 50 minutes each (yes, that is 25 hours of new Wong Kar-wai, for those counting), the first four installments premiere on December 27, followed by two episodes per day.
Starring Hu Ge, Ma Yili, Tang Yan, and Xin Zhilei, Wong Kar-wai is credited as producer and director. The story based on Jin Yucheng’s novel and follows Hu Ge’s A Bao, a businessman in Shanghai in two time periods: the 1960s and 1990s. “Blossoms would be the third part of In the Mood for Love and 2046,” Wong previously said. “Jin Yucheng’s landmark novel Blossoms has been the perfect backdrop to visualize and share my love for my birth city,” said Wong Kar-wai. “With the series, I would like to invite the audience to immerse in the intrigues of Shanghai and its inhabitants in the early 1990s, an exciting time that paved the way for the prosperity of modern Shanghai.”
While no U.S. distribution has been announced yet, the beautiful final trailer has now arrived to help ease the wait. See below (and watch the HD version here) along with a trio of posters.
