Into The Badlands

Martial Media, Culture and Other Arts Martial Media and Popular Culture
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The media blitz is on!

‘Into The Badlands’ Star Daniel Wu Talks About Bringing The Spirituality Of Martial Arts To AMC Series At NYCC
By Alex Garofalo @Ja9GarofaloTV a.garofalo@ibtimes.com on October 11 2015 5:48 PM EDT


Daniel Wu, pictured as Sunny in “Into the Badlands” Season 1, teased his new role at New York Comic Con Saturday. AMC

For “Into the Badlands” star and executive producer Daniel Wu and fight director Stephen Fung, getting AMC to greenlight the upcoming martial arts series was easy. The pair told reporters at New York Comic Con Saturday the network called them just hours after their pitch to say they wanted the show. However, getting the martial arts series right was not so simple.

“Into the Badlands” tells the story of deadly, veteran warrior Sunny (Daniel Wu) who rescues a young boy named M.K. (Aramis Knight), leading to a perilous journey through the dangerous Badlands – a feudal land ruled over by power hungry barons and their armies of Clippers – to find enlightenment.

“It’s very easy to do a watered down version of a martial arts show – set up a camera rolling, do a few punches and get out,” Fung told reporters at Comic Con.

While the series took great pains to get the choereography and authenticity of the “Hong Kong” style martial arts right in the show, Wu told Internatonal Business Times it was also important to preserve the spirituality of the art form.

“I think there is stuff we did want to avoid because I think ‘Kung Fu’ is very ‘fortune cookie’ in some ways – ‘take the pebble from my hand’ and all,” Wu said when asked if “Into the Badlands” drew inspiration from the 1970s series starring David Carradine. “We wanted to have that because I think it’s important that in the martial arts we also show the spirituality of martial arts. I love UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship] too, but you don’t see the art of martial arts there. We wanted to make sure the sprituality side is there, but not in that cheesy ‘Kung Fu’ way. That’s not to knock ‘Kung Fu.’ It had its moment. That show was like a stepping stone for us.”

Wu went on the discuss the spiritual heart of the show.

“The martial arts spirituality is important because you need that balance. With the violence you also need the philosophy of martial arts to balance that out or else it just becomes all about the violence. Later as the story develops you see, with the secret [M.K.] has, more of a spiritual element of the show,” Wu said. “We say the story is very loosely based on ‘Journey to the West’ which is how the Monkey King brought Buddhism from India to China. It’s about all these challenges he meets on the way and how they transform him from a rebellious, naughty Monkey King into a Buddha himself. So, that’s the real spritual backbone of the show – you see this character Sunny looking for something greater than he has known.”

Fans will have to tune in to the “Into the Badlands” premiere to see how the show brings martial arts to the small screen. The six-episode first season of the AMC series begins airing on Nov. 15.

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AMCs Into the Badlands EP/Fight Director on Making Martial Arts the New Zombie
By Drew Grant | 10/11/15 9:22am


Daniel Wu as Sunny on AMCs Into the Badlands.

Compared to the fan screening of The Walking Dead the night beforewhere the siren call of zombies and Norman Reedus filled Madison Square Gardens to capacitythe turnout for AMCs other post-apocalyptic program, Into the Badlands, had a modest Comic Con turnout. Maybe it was only some 150+ people who filed into one of the seemingly endless Javits Center convention rooms to observer a panel for a show that doesnt premiere until November 15th, and is loosely based on the Chinese story Journey to the West. But the two events shared one thing in common: they were both attended past capacity.

Though its plot may seem more early aughts foreign film sensation than the next hit show from the network that brought you Breaking Bad and Mad Men, Into the Badlands boasts a much more adventure-driven premise: in it, a transient warrior, Sunny (Daniel Wu, also an executive producer on the project) wanders a future where there are no gunsSnowpiercer, much? and the feudal caste system has made a comeback, in a hardcore, Crouching Tiger-kind of way. After finding a special boy M.K. (Aramis Knight) literally inside a box , Sunny begins an epic quest through a world where martial arts imposes the martial rule.

Besides having the obvious appeal of nerd cultureswords! Hot, badass ladies fighting! Flying kicks!AMCs newest offering is notable for having such a strong international contingent both in front and behind the cameras. Stephen Fung is another executive producer of Into the Badlands, and more awesomely, is the shows fight coordinator. Along with the perfectly nick-named Master DeeDee, Fung spent weeks training the actors in a Martial Arts Boot Camp before principal photography ever started filming.

After the panel, we spoke to Fung about the process of turning Hollywood actors into believable warriors.

Observer: What were some of the difficulties of translating this cinematic art form for the small screen?

Stephen Fung: Its the actions journey, if I may put it. Its not a movie, where its a one-sitting experience and then its over after a couple hours. This could be many seasons. So I had to think about: Well, I cant throw everything in the first season, let alone the first episode. We cant show the full range of martial arts right away. The pilot has to be good; it has to have meat in it, but we cant throw every trick in there.

So what we did was map out the characters and their journeys, and what kind of weapons they would choose, and we start from there. We start out with Sunny fighting bare hands, since we want the audience to see how good he is without the blades. Well save the blades for the next fight. So the tree fight: thats a gritty style, a certain look; then the rain fight, which is more poetic. You just saw the fight with the Widow (during the panel), which is how a very strong woman fights, and its completely different than the other ones weve seen before. (Ed. note: you wont be looking at stiletto heels the same way again.)

Each character has its own strength and weaknesses. Quinn, who is the most powerful baron in the land, he fights with one broad sword, which is all about power. Its not about fancy moves, its all about slashing through your enemies.

Observer: So its all about the visceral experience of understanding the character through their fighting style?

Fung: Exactly. Another thing we wanted to do was to keep it pretty grounded. Nothing too supernatural in the fights. No flying.

Observer: There are videos online of you and Master Dee Dee (the martial arts coordinator) training the cast at a martial arts boot camp in preparation for the show. I have to think this must have been a STEEP learning curve for some of the actors. Can you talk about this process a little bit?

Fung: The boot camp took place two months before principal photography. And Ive always believed that boot camps arent just for the actors to be prepared physically, but mentally. To get as close to the fighters mentality as possible. So we had people training for 9 to 4. Usually the day started off with some warmups, exercises, and wed end the day with practicing moves specifically designed for the fights in the series. After that, wire work. Then theyd get to go home and rest, while me and Master Dee Dee would stay and choreograph the fight, which I would shoot on my camera. Id go home at night, and edit it really quickly.

Then Id bring it to the directors, and wed talk about ways to make it better.

Observer: Which actor would you say is the most improved after the camp?

Fung: I think for sure Emily (Beechum, who plays The Widow) and Aramis (who plays M.K.) because he had so much work to do on the wires. You might be able to quick very high and well on the ground, but once youre on the wirethe way you pivot, the way you use the power, its different. Because Aramis fightsdifferently, without giving too much away.

Theres a lot of wire work in Hollywood, and its used brilliantly. The difference is in China wed have men physically holding the wires and pulling the actors up, whereas here its mechanical. Its pretty electronic. But for this, we needed the feel to be so specific, the lands to be so different, that it was very difficult to do with machines. So thats one of the differences.

Observer: What most surprised you about moving these fights from boot camp to location?

Fung: The fights themselves were very similar. The widow scene is almost exactly the same, but thats because, you look at it: its all taken place in one large room. Theres some elevation, but its just like the place where we practiced. Now take episode two, where its a 50-1 fight scene, but its in a factory, and there are different levels, and by the end Sunny is on different levels of beams. We couldnt really choreograph it, because our (training complex) was just one flat layer. We just had to count on our experience.

Some of it is surprisingly good. When we do the Hong Kong style, there is quite a bit of improvisation. Thats why we put a lot of pressure on the set decorators and art directors for the show: we couldnt just make it up out of thin air, or look at a blueprint and imagine what the fight would look like.

Observer: It seems like the show has a very visceral element to it.

Fung: The thing about Hollywood is you guys have the best technology, the best equipment and all that. Theres a new convention call the MobyCam, which is a cross between a handheld cam and a steadicam. And the great thing about the Mobi-Cam is that you can have these cinematic big shots AND that Hong Kong film feel, like you are there in the room during the fight, which is all handheld. So for the opening fight, we had a clipper with a camera jumping down together with Sunny on wires. You see Sunny go down, and then the camera follows.

Observer: Do you think the shows Chinese influence gave Badlands such great roles (and fights) for women?

Fung: Since the early days of Chinese cinema, there have been really strong female leads. From Mulan to Crouching Tiger, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that female fighting is very poetic. Its sexy. Its just how their bodies are designed. When you see The Widow fight, she has these very specific stances that look good.

Thats the thing about teaching martial arts the Chinese way as opposed to Western cinema: the rhythm is different. Hong Kong is very fight, fight, fight, but then you break up and go into a stance. So at the end of the day its not about which martial arts style is being used, its about what looks cool. Its the most important thing, because its the most unusual aspect of what this show is about.

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Into the Badlands Brings Martial Arts Back to American TV—And It’s a Bloodbath
Bryan Lufkin
Filed to: nycc 201510/10/15 8:15pm

Kicks. Punches. Swords. A whole lotta blood. A who’s who crew of martial artists and choreographers, and, at last, an Asian lead for a modern TV drama. It’s Into the Badlands, and hopefully it kickstarts a new chapter in genre television.

Arguably, the last popular example of a martial arts TV show in the US was Kung Fu, which ended its run a whopping 40 years ago. AMC hopes to change that. The cable channel that brought us Mad Men, The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad held a cast and crew panel at New York Comic Con on Saturday for the upcoming Into the Badlands. They teased a scene from the pilot that showed The Village’s Emily Beecham as a blade-brandishing killer with acrobatic death moves. It was gory as ****. Like, Tarantino-grade.

The fight sequence was lightning-fast and unapologetically bloody, climaxing in a Street Fighter-like combo move that used double swords to make mincemeat of one foe, streams of blood squirting everywhere like water out of a leak-dotted balloon. There was also an axe-to-the-forehead that ended with a satisfying squish. Not gonna lie… it’s not for everybody. It was as over-the-top as a gory hack-and-slash game. (I loved it, but others won’t.)


Emily Beecham as The Widow. Photo: James Dimmock/AMC

And yet? Beecham’s actual movements were mesmerizingly beautiful and elaborate. Her assault was packed full of complex content whose choreography might enchant viewers who otherwise find fighting movies unpalatable.

Stephen Fung, the show’s fight director who is also a famous actor and filmmaker in Asia, said that was the goal. He wanted to bring Hong Kong-style martial arts action to Into the Badlands.

“It’s not just perceived as fist-fighting—it’s more like a dance. We choreographed it like a dance. Each move is very specific,” Fung said. The martial arts used in the show borrow from an array of styles, kind of like Bruce Lee’s did.

“We wanted to marry that authentic Hong Kong [martial arts] style with an American drama, and we couldn’t have done it without these two gentlemen here,” said co-creator Al Gough, referring to Fung, as well as star, executive producer, and veteran actor Daniel Wu. Both are well-known in Hong Kong and China.

The cast of Into the Badlands, many of whom were new to martial arts, worked their asses off in a training camp that Fung led. He employed the same martial arts training system used by Jackie Chan and Jet Li for the boot camp, which also utilized the expertise of Huan-Chiu Ku, renowned martial arts choreographer who’s worked on Kill Bill and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

You’ll notice that there are no guns in this universe. The setting for Into the Badlands takes Hong Kong-influenced martial arts and plops them in lush wetlands and plantation-filled fields in the distant future. (The show is filmed in New Orleans.) It’s set 500 years from now, and it definitely blends visual cues from both Asia and America in a novel way. Meanwhile, everything’s run by barons who outlawed firearms a century prior, in order to prevent an uprising.

I’m a little nervous, since this show is yet another series set in a dystopian future. But while the fighting is borrowed from Chinese and Hong Kong martial arts cinema, the creators say the world’s social structure mimics feudal Japan, which is interesting: There are barons (like the shogunate) who control land and vital resources, and also manage fighting forces called clippers (samurai) amid a society of nomads (ronin). The creators said Kurosawa movies and medieval Japanese history were key influences.


Daniel Wu as Sunny. Photo: James Minchin III/AMC

As for Wu, he has an extensive martial arts background (shaolin kung fu, wushu, muay thai) and plays main character Sunny, the top baron’s top clipper, who’s killed 400 people. One day, he rescues a young boy called M.K. (Aramis Knight, Ender’s Game) who apparently holds secrets to Sunny’s past, which prompts a journey that the Widow (badass killer Emily Beecham) regularly disrupts.

“It brings that big screen level of action that we’re used to in Hong Kong to the American small screen,” Wu said, and mentions there should be two big fight scenes per episode. He promised the fighting gets crazier as the season rolls on, and that each fight reveals something about the character.

All the characters are presented as morally ambiguous. The Widow, for example, is an apparent mentor to an army of young female warriors-in-training she calls “her butterflies.” Is it ethical to teach kids how to be lethal death machines? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, this universe seems pretty messed up. Only the strong survive.

“The only thing that really matters in this world is strength and weakness. Race, sex, none of it matters,” Gough says. “Martial arts is the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female.”

Into the Badlands Brings Martial Arts Back to American TV—And It’s a Bloodbath

Aramis Knight as M.K. Photo: James Minchin III/AMC

I also want to include: ‘Bout ‘effing time, a drama on TV that has an Asian star. We’ve finally been seeing more Asians in starring roles on the comedy side of things, with Fresh off the Boat, which premiered earlier this year, and the new Dr. Ken, which stars Ken Jeong. And of course there’s Steven Yeun, who plays a key role in The Walking Dead’s action ensemble.

When asked at the panel what he thought about being one of the few Asian leads (let alone Asian male leads) in American TV history, Wu said: “When have we seen an Asian-American lead in a show? Almost never. AMC was adamant that the lead is an Asian. For me, as an Asian-American kid growing up, I looked to people like Jet Li and Bruce Lee, because I couldn’t find people like me on the big screen. And now, 40 years later, to be able to be that person, that’s awesome.”

The show premieres on AMC November 15, and I’ll be recapping all of season one’s six gruesome, katana-slicing episodes right here on io9.

Top image: Alexia Ioannides as Tilda. Photo: Patti Perret/AMC

Email the author at bryan@gizmodo.com, or follow him on Twitter.

I’m going to the sneak tomorrow. :cool:

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One more interesting development…

China switches submission to Go Away, Mr. Tumor

By Kevin Ma

Mon, 12 October 2015, 09:50 AM (HKT)
Awards News

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released the official submission list for this year’s Best Foreign Film contenders.

The biggest surprise in the list is China’s submission, which was changed from Jean-Jacques ANNAUD’s Wolf Totem to HAN Yan 's box office hit Go Away Mr. Tumor (pictured).

Local media reported earlier that the French co-production had been chosen to represent China in the award race. Last month, director JIA Zhangke held a public campaign to have his film Mountains May Depart be considered.

Other Asian representatives for the award include The Last Reel (Cambodia), To the Fore (Hong Kong), Court (India), 100 Yen Love (Japan), Men Who Save the World Lelaki harapan dunia (Malaysia), Heneral Luna (Philippines), 7 Letters (Singapore), How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) (Thailand) and Jackpot Trúng s! (Vietnam).

The last time an Asian film was nominated as a finalist in the category was two years, with Rithy PANH 's The Missing Picture L’Image manquante (2013). The last Asian film to win in the category was Japan’s Departures (2008).

GAMT stars Daniel Wu. Taiwan has submitted Assassin.

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Seen!

Last night, I was at the Hollywood premiere of Inside the Badlands Ep.1. The show has a lot of potential. AMC is earnestly looking to serve the martial arts genre fans like it did for the horror genre fans with The Walking Dead. The fight scenes are solid - Ep.1. has two major fights, the second one is an homage to the rain fight in The Grandmaster mashed up with the Crazy 88 fight in Kill Bill. It’s success will key off three factors: #1 if U.S. audiences can tell the difference between a decent fight scene and a mediocre one #2 if U.S. audiences will accept an Asian non-comedic lead in a TV show and #3 the global impact - this last one is the most telling factor as this may well be a gateway for AMC to penetrate the bamboo curtain.

At the ****tail reception, I had a great chat with AMC President Charles Collier, who was very open with me about his intentions with the series. I also had some nice chats with most of the cast (unfortunately Daniel Wu was in Hong Kong filming but I’ve already interviewed him on this for our next issue). I also got to speak briefly with Stephen Fung.

Photos coming. Our intrepid photographer, Greg Lynch Jr., who does video accompanied me to the sneak peak. I’lll post those on our Facebook as well as in our next issue soon.

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That’s what I’m talking about

Not to play the race card, but this is a breakthrough - an Asian lead in a non-comedic role.

Oct 13 2015, 2:46 pm ET
New AMC Show ‘Into the Badlands’ Praised for ‘Groundbreaking’ Casting
by Michael D. Nguyen


Daniel Wu plays Sunny in AMC’s new show “Into the Badlands.” James Minchin III / AMC

A new martial arts AMC television show, which features two Asian-American leads, is receiving strong buzz ahead of its fall premiere.

“Into the Badlands,” starring Daniel Wu and Aramis Knight, is set in a undetermined future where warlord-like barons maintain power through the use of mercenaries known as “clippers.” Although in some ways modern, the world has a notable absence of firearms, so combat is primarily hand-to-hand.

During a panel discussion last weekend at New York Comic Con, Wu was asked how he felt about being one of the few Asian leads of a television show in recent memory.

“I didn’t think about it until after we were done…because I had a career for 18 years in Hong Kong where I didn’t have to think about race at all,” Wu responded. “And to come back here and be that, to think about when has it been since we’ve seen an Asian American lead in a showalmost never.”

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Wu has had a long, diverse career in Hong Kong, including numerous starring roles and even singing in a boy band he founded.


The 40-year-old actor was originally brought in to produce the show. It was only later that he was cast as the lead role of Sunny, a feared clipper who begins to question his way of life.
Daniel Wu as Sunny in AMC’s original series “Into the Badlands” James Minchin III / AMC

“It’s awesome AMC was adamant. They were adamant that the lead was an Asian, [that] there was an Asian American to play this role,” Wu told a packed auditorium of fans.

Aramis Knight, who is of Pakistani and East Indian descent, will star alongside Wu as M.K., a young man with yet-to-be-explained potential, who acts as the impetus for the show. Knight’s past credits include roles in “Ender’s Game” and the television series “Scorpion.”

“I think not only is the martial arts groundbreaking but casting [Wu and I] as predominant characters is also groundbreaking. It’s never been done before,” Knight told NBC News, adding “I think it’s sort of amazing that AMC was really the first to say, 'You know, we can sell a mixed race [person] as a lead.”


Aramis Knight as M.K. in AMC’s original series “Into the Badlands” James Minchin III / AMC

The martial arts aspect of “Into the Badlands” was what drew in Wu and director Stephen Fung in the first place. Acrobatic combat was so central to the story and look of the show that Fung’s Hong Kong fight unit was deployed along with the conventional dramatic unit. The result is a dystopian show featuring a distinctly Hong Kong vibe.

“We had this unit and it was running full time…when we say there’s authentic Hong Kong martial arts, it’s because we used a system that they use in China. This is the system that Jackie Chan uses, the system Jet Li uses, and obviously that Stephen [Fung] and Daniel [Wu] do,” Al Gough, one of the show’s creators, said.

“Into the Badlands” premieres November 15 on AMC.

The boy band comment is incorrect btw. That was for a satire film, The Heavenly Kings, for which Wu earned a Best New Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

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That’s also what I’m talking about!

Not to play the sex card, but there are a lot of sword hotties in this show…

AMC’s ‘Into the Badlands’ Celebrates Martial Arts, Strong Female Characters


MOVI Inc./Variety/REX Shutterstock
October 14, 2015 | 04:23PM PT
Jacob Bryant

AMC’s newest show “Into the Badlands” held an intimate screening Tuesday at The London, West Hollywood, where creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar called it a passion project.

“Miles and I have always been huge fans of martial arts and martial arts movies and it’s something that’s not on television at the moment,” Gough said. “It was a passion project of ours.”

After working on shows like “Smallville,” where 22-episode seasons were the norm, the two said working on a six-episode season was refreshing and a newer challenge.

“With six episodes there is a different momentum and things really have to happen,” Millar said. “For us it was ‘how do you make the story interesting and develop the characters in that short amount of time?'”

“Into the Badlands” follows Sunny, a ruthless warrior played by Daniel Wu, and M.K., played by Aramis Knight, as they travel across the dangerous badlands on a spiritual journey. Through their journey they’ll encounter many of the feudal barons that control the Badlands.

What drew many of the cast members to the series, aside from the fight scenes, was the amount of strong female characters that resided in the Badlands.

“My character is the Widow, one of the only female barons in the Badlands,” Emily Beecham said. “She has a group of young women that she calls her Butterflies and she trains them to become very skilled fighters and teaches them that women should have an equal voice to men and they need to fight for it.”

The Widow is far from the only strong female role in the show. Sarah Bolger describes her character as Lady MacBeth-esque with an innocence and underlying ambition.

“What’s great is the female characters rule in a way that is not hand-and-fist,” Bolger said. “They rule psychologically and through intelligence and it’s great to be able to do that. There’s a juxtaposition between the gruesome brutality and the mind-manipulating. Our war is one of intellect.”

(Pictured: Madeleine Mantock, Emily Beecham, Orla Brady, Ally Ioannides and Sarah Bolger at the “Into the Badlands” after-party)

…and I was at that after party. And I got to get up-close-and-personal with four of the five ladies pictured above. Pix soon come. :cool:

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Pix from the Into the Badlands Hollywood Sneak Preview

See our facebook album Into the Badlands Hollywood Sneak Preview October 13 Taken at The London West Hollywood Photos by Greg Lynch Jr.


Emily Beecham


Sarah Bolger


Madeleine Mantock


Ally Ioannides


Aramis Knight


Stephen Fung


Charlie Collier


Can anyone name all these people? I gave away the first one above.

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:smiley: Great Pic’s ! Rough Gig !

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From across the pond

Here’s a London-based website’s take on this. This is really more about international distribution of the AMC brand than it will be about the U.S. reception of it.

Show of the week: Into the Badlands

Into the Badlands is the latest original drama from The Walking Dead channel AMC. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, it is a genre-bending blend of martial arts-meets-western-meets-futuristic-action-series.

Based loosely on the classic 16th Century Chinese book Journey to the West, considered one of the great novels of Chinese literature, the series is set on a future earth, after the planet has been ravaged by a disaster.

Chinese-American film star Daniel Wu stars as Sunny, a clipper, an assassin-come-soldier in the employ of one of the warlords who controls the Badlands. The story follows his journey and that of M.K. (The Dark Knight Rises‘ Aramis Knight), a seemingly average teenage boy who actually has special powers.

Wu sat down with TBI at MIPCOM to talk about his new series and says his move from film into TV was a physically challenging, if rewarding, one.

“On typical martial arts film there are maybe three or four fight scenes and it is filmed over six months, this had two per episode and I was in every one and was fighting every day in the Louisiana heat wearing a leather trench coat,” Wu said. “I have made almost 70 films, but this is the hardest project I have done physically because so much is happening in a short space of time.”

AMC has shown some of the most iconic cable series of recent years, from Mad Men to Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead and its companion shows. In the US and internationally it certainly sees Into the Badlands as a show that will sit well alongside smash hit zombie series The Walking Dead.

Speaking when the former was announced, earlier this year, Bruce Tuchman, president, AMC and Sundance Channel Global, said: “We think Into the Badlands and Fear the Walking Dead will complement each other perfectly as we continue to grow our global footprint and support our pay-TV platform partners in expanding their subscriber base.”

Into the Badlands should appeal to a wide selection of action fans, spanning, as it does, everything from martial arts to Western.

“In the simplest sense it is in the martial arts genre, but it is a little more complex than that,” says Wu. “It is combining a lot of elements of Western cowboy films, Asian martial arts films, but in a post apocalyptic America setting, so a it is a mash up of a lot of things and a lot of genres I enjoy. We have taken it all and put it into one, which has been the challenge but also the exciting thing about making this and its success will pivot on that. It is something totally different you haven’t seen on television.”

The show: Into the Badlands
The producer: AMC Studios
The distributor: Entertainment One Television
The broadcaster: AMC (US)
The concept: Genre-bending action series set in a post-apocalyptic America where feudal barons rule and clippers (soldier-assassins) enforce the rules

Date added:
October 20, 2015
Company:
AMC, AMC Studios, Aramis Knight, Daniel Wu, Entertainment One Television, Into the Badlands, The Walking Dead

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A little dated, but I’m ttt-ing this a lot intentionally

Regrettably, Marton Csokas and Orla Brady were the two stars at the Hollywood premiere that I did not get to meet. I ran out of time. My bad. :o

‘Into The Badlands’ Cast Previews Season 1 At NYCC; Meet The Baron And Baroness Of AMC’s New Martial Arts Series
By Alex Garofalo @Ja9GarofaloTV a.garofalo@ibtimes.com on October 11 2015 12:12 AM EDT


Marton Csokas (left) and Orla Brady (right), pictured as Quinn (left) and Lydia (right) in “Into the Badlands” Season 1, teased their characters’ relationship at New York Comic Con Oct. 10, 2015. AMC

Ahead of the November premiere of “Into the Badlands,” the cast of the highly anticipated AMC series descended on New York Comic Con to introduce fans to the show’s unique world. Unique is an understatement. AMC is billing the show as the first true martial arts-based series on television and the network has pulled out all the stops to bring the futuristic tale to the small screen.

The result is a lush world of feudal barons ruling over a warrior class of poor commoners in a gun-free, dystopian version of America. Marton Csokas, who plays Quinn, the Badlands’ most powerful baron, and Orla Brady, who plays Lydia, Quinn’s calculating wife, spent Comic Con teasing TV’s most ruthless power couple since the Underwoods (“House of Cards”).

Quinn and Lydia lord over their alloted section of the Badlands – there are seven barons in total – with the help of an army of former impoverished children known as Clippers. Series star Daniel Wu plays Sunny, the most feared Clipper of them all. Quinn keeps Sunny and the other Clippers under his thumb by convincing them they are better off under his rule than outside the Badlands where they would struggle to survive. Csokas told International Business Times at Comic Con Quinn’s pitch is, at least, partly true.

“He probably believes that that’s true, but he certainly is using it as a ruling rod,” Csokas said. “But I think in part it is true.”

After all, in the Badlands, no one can truly trust anyone else, not even their own son.

“Everybody that they come across wants to usurp, even in his own house. His son that he shares with Lydia wants to do exactly that,” Csokas said. “He does not agree with how things are run and in the confidence of youth, which can overleap itself, if he was not psychologically dominated, he would be happy to kill Quinn. And in fact he does just that. All these forces to bring him down and what he has built – it would end. I think he believes he is preserving the people in an extreme way. So, in the Darwinian sense I think he thinks he is doing what he has to because if he didn’t somebody else would.”

Meanwhile, Quinn’s wife Lydia has her own perspective.

“She is in that curious position of not being empowered herself, but deriving her power from the people around her and having been married to the most powerful baron in the Badlands, she has been in a pretty good position” Orla Brady told IBT. “That is changing at the start of the show. [Quinn] is exercising his right to take another wife. It’s not easy for Lydia. That’s where she stands at the beginning of the story. She is literally seeing a younger version of herself. She sees ambition and knows that puts her in danger.”

Lydia might not have any combat prowess, but she’s still a fighter. In fact, elsewhere in the “Badlands” universe the wife of another baron has killed her husband and taken over as the first female baron, going by the name the Widow (Emily Beecham). The power move could serve as inspiration for Lydia, who wants to see her son take power.

“When someone does something that is an entirely new idea and you see that it is possible – Quinn has a line in episode one [when he gets the news about the Widow] that is: ‘I hope this doesn’t give [Lydia] any ideas.’ It’s said as a bit of an aside, but many a truth is said in jest,” Brady said. “I think a seed has been planted there.”

However, predicting too much discord between the longtime partners might be premature.

“They have been a team for years. There is no reason for them to be against each other,” Brady said.

“Even if [Quinn] wouldn’t admit it, they would be lost without each other,” Csokas said.

Fans will have to tune in to the “Into the Badlands” premiere to see how the couple’s complicated (to say the least) relationship shakes out. The six-episode first season of the AMC series begins airing on Nov. 15.

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innerestin…

Amazon Prime Acquires Daniel Wus Into the Badlands in U.K.


Courtesy of James Dimmock/AMC
October 23, 2015 | 08:10AM PT
Leo Barraclough

LONDON Amazon Prime Video has acquired exclusive streaming rights in the U.K. to AMCs Into the Badlands from Entertainment One Television.

Each episode of the genre-bending martial arts series, loosely based on the Chinese classic tale Journey to the West, will be available to Amazon Prime members in the U.K. on a weekly basis from Nov. 17, after they air in the U.S. Entertainment One launched the show at TV market Mipcom earlier this month.

Set in a devastated future world controlled by powerful feudal barons, Into the Badlands tells the story of a ruthless warrior, Sunny (Daniel Wu, Tai Chi Zero), and a young boy, M.K. (Aramis Knight, The Dark Knight Rises), who embark on a spiritual odyssey across a dangerous land.

The show is created by executive producers/showrunners/writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville), and executive produced by Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg, director David Dobkin, fight director Stephen Fung and Daniel Wu.

Prime Video offers subscribers access to more than 15,000 movies and TV episodes, including Transparent, Mr. Robot, Bosch, Hand of God, Vikings, Outlander and Ripper Street.

I still have to figure a way to watch this as I don’t have AMC (and this doesn’t help me). I’ve seen the first two episodes so I’m good until December, I suppose. :frowning:

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The first fight scene clip released

This fight comes up early in the first episode.

//youtu.be/310RluewPj8

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The Characters of Into the Badlands: The Clippers

//youtu.be/WECDvOeENXU

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[QUOTE=GeneChing;1288202]This fight comes up early in the first episode.[/quote]

Fight choreography and cinematography look kind of boring :frowning:

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Stephen Wu

Oops. That’s an embarrassing mistake NY Daily News. :o

Steampunk meets kung fu in AMCs latest drama Into the Badlands
BY Don Kaplan
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, October 30, 2015, 5:59 PM


To make Badlands work, they turned to accomplished fight coordinators like Stephen Wu who have worked with Jackie Chan and other martial arts masters. James Minchin III/AMC

Its got some serious kick.

Into the Badlands, AMCs new kung fu fantasy, aims to slice its way into peoples living rooms starting Nov. 15. The show will rely on the means and methods that have made classic Hong Kong cinema into one of the worlds most popular forms of entertainment.

It stars Daniel Wu as an assassin living 500 years from now who is forced to chop his way through a Mad Max-style future. Guns dont exist there, and the deadliest weapons are swords, fists and feet.

Its a mashup of all the things we love, says Alfred Gough, who created the drama with longtime collaborator Miles Millar (Shanghai Noon, Smallville). Its martial arts, science fiction and Japanese samurai you know, the good stuff.


“Into the Badlands” stars Daniel Wu as an assassin living 500 years from now who is forced to chop his way through a Mad Max-style future. James Dimmock/AMC

The mash up is a strange one, but it works.

Wu uses his mastery of Chinese martial arts to pound, slice and disembowel his way through a post-apocalyptic world. The social structure mimics feudal Japan. There are barons (like the shogunate) who control land and vital resources and cling to power with personal armies of warriors called clippers (samurai). Outside the walls of their lush plantations (the show is filmed near New Orleans), they are pitted against a society of nomads (ronin).


Madeleine Mantock plays Veil in “Into the Badlands.” James Minchin III/AMC

Wu a master at various kung fu styles, including shaolin, wushu and muay thai kickboxing plays Sunny, an elite assassin and one of the closest advisers to Baron Quinn (Marton Csokas). He presides over a sprawling fort that looks a lot like a Southern plantation.

The chop-socky meets steampunk style show is loosely based on the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West and follows Sunny and a young boy who try to journey across a dangerous land to find enlightenment.

Emily Beecham (28 Weeks Later, The Village), Sarah Bolger (The Tudors, In America) and Oliver Stark (The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box, My Hero) also star.


If you want those highly stylized Hong Kong fight scenes, theres no rule book. And its not something a traditional network would have the patience for," Miles Millar said. Patti Perret/AMC

The only thing that really matters in this world is strength and weakness. Race, sex, none of it matters, Gough says. Martial arts is the great equalizer. It doesnt matter if youre male or female.

But the task of bringing high-quality, cinema-style martial arts to U.S. TV is no small feat. Thats according to Gough and Millar, who oversaw two Jackie Chan films, Shanghai Noon and its sequel Shanghai Knights.

The pair was also behind Martial Law, the 1998 CBS show that starred Chans longtime pal and co-star, Sammo Hung.


“The Tudors” star Sarah Bolger playsJade.
James Minchin III/AMC


Marton Csokas is a scar-faced feudal boss.
Patti Perret/AMC

To make Badlands work, they turned to accomplished fight coordinators like Stephen Wu who have worked with Chan and other martial arts masters, and San Francisco-born Wu, who was discovered and managed by Chan.

Making this show is challenging in every regard, says Millar. If you want those highly stylized Hong Kong fight scenes, theres no rule book. And its not something a traditional network would have the patience for. These scenes are more like playing jazz. You do whatever makes it work. Theres a lot of freestyle maneuvering.

To get to that level, the entire cast was sent to a martial arts boot camp for six weeks before production started. Participants learned the same martial arts training system used by Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

But the visceral fight scenes arent the only part of the show that requires painstaking attention.

AMC has set the bar so high with other groundbreaking programming, like The Walking Dead and Mad Men, that a nuanced storyline and rich character development is an integral part of Badlands. The show aims to take its place among other high-octane dramas, like Sons of Anarchy and Game of Thrones.

AMC wanted to do something that was difficult and groundbreaking with this, says Millar. So the level of drama had to match the martial arts.

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Warcraft teaser

Only relevant because of Daniel Wu.

//youtu.be/FA_8TY9Z5Zg

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My All American trailer

Only relevant because of Sarah Bolger.

//youtu.be/ii6-TeZgeWM

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Rolling Stone buzz

‘Into the Badlands’: Meet the New Dystopian Kung-Fu Plantation Western
AMC’s latest would-be hit isn’t a genre show — it’s ‘every’ genre show rolled into one
By Rob Sheffield November 4, 2015


Daniel Wu, center, in ‘Into the Badlands.’ James Minchin III/AMC

Kung-Fu and the Western: always an unkillable combination. Into the Badlands, AMC’s post-apocalyptic martial-arts thriller set in the deep South — or what’s left of it after civilization collpases — kicks off with a bang: Mystery man Daniel Wu rides in on his motorcycle wearing a red leather trench coat, shades and a ceremonial sword. Before he fights, he makes a point of removing the blade, because he prefers to handle his blood baths with his fists. (Wu is a veteran of Hong Kong action flicks like 2012’s Tai Chi Zero; one of the fight directors is Master Dee Dee from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Kill Bill movies.) Many corpses later, someone finally gets around to asking who the hell he is: “Got a name? You just show up, kill people and leave?”

The guy’s name is Sunny, not the most terrifying name in the world, and he’s a Clipper — a professional killer with more than 400 tattoos to mark his ever-increasing body count. Loosely based on a 16th-century Chinese tale, Journey to the West, about the adventures of a wandering Buddhist monk, Badlands conjures the ghost of Kung Fu, the classic Seventies yarn with David Carradine roaming the Wild West seeking enlightenment and kicking ass. Throw in some Game of Thrones intrigue, loads of Django Unchained Civil War plantation ambience, the spirit of Bruce Lee and the bleak vibe of The Walking Dead, and you’ve got Badlands.

The last remnants of known civilization are controlled by evil barons like Sunny’s master, Quinn, the marvelous Marton Csokas. With his quasi-Amish beard and starched collars, the baron rules his opium empire while playing old blues records on the Victrola in his mansion, living large on a plantation surrounded by poppy fields. “People once thought there’s a Holy Book,” he proclaims in his Colonel Sanders drawl to his private army. “They believed it held the answers from a god that would save them. Boys, there is no god in the Badlands.”

He controls the poppy supply; the Widow, played by Emily Beecham, controls the oil, along with her all-girl army of Butterflies. She’s the liveliest villain in the tale — think Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks in full-on Marilyn mode, except Joan Holloway Harris never got to enjoy the pleasure of separating the McCann Erickson creeps’ skulls from their shoulders. Ally Ioannides is her deadliest protogree Tilda, the Butterfly warrior as a punk rock Arya.

It was the Baron who found Sunny as a child, shivering and abandoned, and trained him as a Clipper; he is now his bloodiest enforcer, with the tattoos to prove it. “No parents, no name, no past,” the Baron says. “I figured if the Badlands hadn’t killed him, there must be a strength inside him.” (This is the kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland that has motorcycles, but not guns, which is convenient for professionals who specialize in kicking hombres in the face.) When a woman in his bed purrs, “I know buried under all this ink is a good man,” Sunny just mutters, “You’re wrong.” But he’s starting to wonder if there’s a better way somewhere else. And on Into the Badlands, the tough question is who he’ll have to kill to get there.

From The Archives Issue 1248: November 19, 2015

It’s not quite “‘every’ genre show rolled into one”. It’s a genre we labelled three years ago: Chinese Steampunk. Hollywood is just catching up. :wink:

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Deadline review

The video is embedded so you have to follow the link to view it.

‘Into The Badlands’ Review: AMC Series A Good Return For Martial Arts To TV
by Dominic Patten
November 5, 2015 12:49pm

It’s mainly the huge shadow of blockbuster series The Walking Dead, but it often feels like there is a lot of postapocalyptic programming on AMC. But honestly, with the most successful show on TV on your schedule, who wouldn’t mine that vein even deeper? Earlier this year we had spinoff Fear The Walking Dead, and now we have Into The Badlands, debuting on November 15 right after TWD.

Well, you’re in for a treat that night with the Daniel Wu-led martial arts series from Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Into The Badlands, as my video review above says, is a smoldering, serpentine and supremely stylized series that does the legacy of Bruce Lee proud.

Masterfully choreographed by EP and fight director Stephen Fung and superbly executed by the charismatic American-born Hong Kong star Wu, the fight scenes in ITB are gravity defying and mind blowing in a pretty good yarn of a narrative. As a huge martial arts devotee, as I also say in my video review, the series has some of the best and most versatile moves you will ever see on either the small or big screen.

But action is nothing much without story and, though sometimes a bit slow in the carefully measured plot, the story in ITB is intriguingly based on the 16th century tale Journey To The West. The six-episode hourlong series depicts a Southern gothic-tinged, gun-free, godless America long after a great war, where seven barons rule the feudal lands with unsentimental ruthlessness enforced by armies of fighters called Clippers. And, to paraphrase Blade Runner, if you’re not Clipper, you’re little people.

Among the greatest of Clippers is Wu’s Sunny, who serves the Baron Quinn, played like ultimate Amish evil by the too-often-overlooked Marton Csoksas. Add to the mix a war brewing among the Barons and the newly empowered Widow, portrayed with icy cool by Emily Beecham, and you have an upside-down world about to flip even more. On top of that, there’s the mysterious and powerful M.K. (Aramis Knight), a young man Sunny saves and brings on as his protégé, and you have journey of change on many levels.

And it is a journey well worth taking – so suit up. Take a look at my Into The Badlands video review and tell us what you think.