Among the more fascinating legends in the short but memorable life of Bruce Lee is the TV show the martial-arts icon pitched in the early Seventies about a Chinese immigrant traveling through America in the late-19th Century. The studio politely declined, the Lee family story goes, then stole key elements of the pitch to make Kung Fu, a Western-meets-Eastern where the immigrant was played by the Caucasian actor David Carradine.
On April 5th, the legend becomes fact in an unexpected, wonderful way with Warrior, a new Cinemax drama inspired by Lee’s notes for that unsold/stolen pitch, executive produced by Justin Lin and Lee’s daughter Shannon. A lush action drama, set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1878, Warrior feels like someone asked, “What if The Knick, but with hatchet fights?”