One of my favourite TV shows as a very young kid was Kung Fu, in which David Carradine wandered about the Wild West righting wrongs and defeating bad guys in slow motion amidst philosophical flashbacks to his character’s earlier time in a Shaolin temple. The series initially ran from 1972-75 and later spawned a [disappointing] sequel series. There was once talk of a movie version starring Bill Paxton [!], and a female-centric reboot of the series was mentioned not that long ago, but neither of those projects happened.
However, now comes the news that Universal Pictures has optioned the rights to Kung Fu and is re-teaming with director David Leitch following the commercial success of Hobbs & Shaw. A writer will be announced soon, though it will probably be a while before we learn who will be playing Kwai Chang Caine aka Grasshopper, or if indeed the lead role will be that of a different character. Hopefully this time around they won’t announce an Asian actor with huge martial arts skill as the lead before replacing him with a Caucasian actor with limited martial arts experience – which is what happened in 1972 when no less than Bruce Lee was originally intended to star before being replaced by Carradine.
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