The Box Office success of Shang Chi, a Marvel Studio production, has clearly shown that movies with East Asian actors and themes have become both financially viable projects and popular attractions. Such success has been helped, no doubt, by the fact that China and other East Asian countries are taking increasingly important roles in our world, but is also due to the growing recognition of the lives of immigrants in the United States.
Responding to these trends, we would like to offer a new screenplay, Hope of the Ancestors (written by my son and me), whose time we believe has come. Starting in present day America, yet set against the backdrop of historical events and real time lines, it is a unique work, full of both culture and action, something sure to appeal to a wide audience, yet able to catch the eyes of critics (we would like to think it is the best Asian-related English-language script out there).
I am a semi-retired East Asian specialist with a doctorate in Chinese from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My son is a cell biologist with a doctorate from the Biological & Bio-Medical Sciences Program at Yale University. If you might be interested in representing us and making an attempt to push this movie to directors and production houses, do read the short logline just below and let me know if you would like to read more. A pdf copy of our manuscript can be sent upon request.
Thank you.
Paul Fendos
HOPE OF THE ANCESTORS
Genre: Epic
Sub-Genre: Drama, Action, Martial Arts
Orphaned in Warlord China (1916-1928), then raised by a Buddhist monk and a Manchu Confucian military officer, Joseph Lee makes his way to America (San Francisco), where in the shadow of his past and the Green Gang Boss Master Wang, he searches for a new life as an immigrant. The story of one man’s life, a nuanced representation of China’s attempt to fit into the modern world, Hope of the Ancestors is a stirring spectacle of culture, images and sounds that aims to paint part of the story of a China emerging from its ancient past.
