{"id":4735,"date":"2026-07-23T09:35:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T09:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4735"},"modified":"2026-07-23T09:35:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T09:35:47","slug":"daniel-wu-on-cold-war-1994-twilight-of-the-warriors-and-coming-home-to-hong-kong-the-craft-still-challenges-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4735","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Wu on \u2018Cold War 1994,\u2019 \u2018Twilight of the Warriors\u2019 and Coming Home to Hong Kong: \u2018The Craft Still Challenges Me\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDaniel Wu received the Best from the East Award at the New York Asian Film Festival, capping a stretch that has put him back at the center of Hong Kong\u2019s two biggest franchises: \u201cCold War 1994\u201d and the \u201cTwilight of the Warriors\u201d series.<\/p>\n

Read more Venice Film Festival Reveals 2026 Lineup (Updating Live)<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCold War 1994\u201d is the third installment in the \u201cCold War\u201d series, a prequel written and directed by Longman Leung and produced by Bill Kong and Ivy Ho, set in the run-up to Hong Kong\u2019s 1997 handover. The first two films, released in 2012 and 2016, were the highest-grossing Hong Kong productions of their respective years. In the new film, Wu plays Peter Choi opposite Terrance Lau\u2019s M.B. Lee, a character previously portrayed as a full-blown villain by Chang Kuo-chu in \u201cCold War 2.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWu tells Variety<\/em> he never consciously stepped away from Hong Kong film. The pandemic simply thinned out a schedule that had settled into a rhythm of one American project and one Asian project a year. When \u201cCold War\u201d came along, the pull was the production itself.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a quality production, the scale of it, the script,\u201d Wu says of what drew him back, pointing also to the chance to work alongside three generations of Hong Kong actors, including Lau, whom he singles out as representative of the industry\u2019s new generation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film folds a police procedural into a much larger political canvas, tracking the British colonial government, the Hong Kong police, a powerful business dynasty and the criminal underworld as the territory changes hands. Wu, who was 22 at the time of the actual handover, says the setting let the production dig into a period of corruption and upheaval he lived through but never fully understood until now.<\/p>\n

\n\tPlaying a younger version of a character already established as an antagonist gave Wu a different kind of challenge than he\u2019s used to. He calls the role the most morally ambiguous he\u2019s taken on, since it required tracing how a man who becomes an \u201cevil mastermind\u201d gets there gradually, through a series of compromised choices, rather than starting out that way.<\/p>\n

\n\tReturning to a Hong Kong set after several years away felt less like a job and more like a reunion, Wu says. He recalls arriving for his costume fitting and recognizing nearly everyone in the room, a small-industry familiarity he doesn\u2019t get on American productions, where he\u2019s lucky to know one or two people on a given crew. Sitting down on set with his rice box for lunch, eating char siu fan alongside people he\u2019d worked with for decades, brought back what he calls a genuinely warm feeling. He credits Hong Kong crews with a particular work ethic: \u201cefficient, fast, and no bullshit,\u201d a directness he links to a broader Hong Kong attitude of simply getting things done.<\/p>\n

\n\tWu spent much of his \u201cCold War 1994\u201d press tour in Hong Kong wearing a hat that, it turns out, was hiding a new haircut for his role in \u201cTwilight of the Warriors: The Final Chapter,\u201d the sequel to director Soi Cheang\u2019s \u201cTwilight of the Warriors: Walled In.\u201d That 2024 film, adapted from Yu Yi\u2019s novel \u201cCity of Darkness\u201d and the manhua of the same name by Andy Seto, became Hong Kong\u2019s second-biggest commercial hit ever and swept the Hong Kong Film Awards. Where \u201cWalled In\u201d was set in the 1980s, the new installment moves the story to 1993, the year Kowloon\u2019s Walled City was demolished.<\/p>\n

Read more Brazil Begins Three Days of Mourning After Luiz Carlos Barreto, Its Legendary Film Producer, Dies at 98<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tWu, who studied the Walled City\u2019s architecture in school, calls the setting a rare chance to build a mainstream action franchise around a genuinely singular piece of Hong Kong urban history. He sees both projects as part of a broader shift in how Hong Kong cinema treats its own past, using the 1990s, a decade he says filmmakers \u201cglossed over\u201d while living through it, as material for reflection rather than backdrop.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat shift, Wu says, is happening at a moment when Hong Kong productions can draw on newer digital tools while still leaning on the practical, in-camera stunt work the industry built its reputation on, recalling a time when performers \u201cthrew themselves off the top of a building and just did it for real in camera.\u201d He pushes back on the long-running narrative that Hong Kong film is dying, arguing instead that it\u2019s in something closer to a renaissance, even with a fraction of the annual output it had in the 1980s and \u201990s. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of interesting films being made, whether big scale or small scale, a lot of great performances, a lot of great scripts being written,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe kinds of roles Wu is offered in Hong Kong have shifted too, from the younger leading-man parts that defined much of his career to more mature, fatherly characters, a change he credits partly to age and partly to the character work he\u2019s done in the U.S., where his credits have included the AMC martial-arts series \u201cInto the Badlands,\u201d HBO\u2019s \u201cWestworld,\u201d the film \u201cTomb Raider\u201d and the animated series \u201cAmerican Born Chinese.\u201d He says that kind of opportunity has thinned out generally, arguing Hollywood has moved past a period of genuinely interesting roles for Asian American actors and back toward \u201ccrumbs\u201d or stereotypical parts. He\u2019s more pointed about the ceiling he still sees in the industry, where he says opportunities for Asian American actors, and especially Asian American males, remain narrow.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoving between the two industries has left Wu with what he describes as an unusual sense of identity, neither fully of one world nor the other, but both at once. He notes that his experience differs from most Asian American peers, many of whom have never topped a call sheet, while his own career has run the opposite path: character roles in the U.S., leading roles in Asia. He also points to a structural difference between the two systems: Asian productions tend to run through a single director\u2019s vision, while larger American productions are often shaped by committee, with multiple producers weighing in, leaving him unsure at times whose direction to follow.<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking back over 25 years, Wu points to his collaboration with director Derek Yee, spanning six films including \u201cOne Nite in Mongkok,\u201d \u201cDrink-Drank-Drunk,\u201d \u201cProt\u00e9g\u00e9\u201d and \u201cTriple Tap,\u201d as the turning point that pulled him away from the romantic leads he was initially cast in and toward the darker, more complex characters he prefers. He likens the partnership to Robert De Niro\u2019s with Martin Scorsese, a shorthand so complete that he\u2019d commit to a Yee project without reading the script. \u201cThat put my career in a direction that I wanted it to go,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWu is now developing two scripts for the American market and one for the mainland Chinese market, a deliberate move toward more proactive control over his own projects, with an eye toward eventually returning to directing, nearly two decades after his 2007 feature debut, \u201cHeavenly Kings.\u201d Whatever comes next, he says the appeal hasn\u2019t changed. Whether it\u2019s a script\u2019s demands or the actors around him, every project still teaches him something new. \u201cI would say the craft, the craft still challenges me,\u201d Wu says.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 Screenplay Is Now Available to Buy Online<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Wu on ‘Cold War 1994,’ joining ‘Twilight of the Warriors’ and 25 years in film after his NYAFF Best from the East Award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3783,3784,3785,3786],"class_list":["post-4735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-cold-war-1994","tag-daniel-wu","tag-new-york-asian-film-festival","tag-twilight-of-the-warriors-walled-in"],"yoast_head":"\nDaniel Wu on \u2018Cold War 1994,\u2019 \u2018Twilight of the Warriors\u2019 and Coming Home to Hong Kong: \u2018The Craft Still Challenges Me\u2019 - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=4735\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Daniel Wu on \u2018Cold War 1994,\u2019 \u2018Twilight of the Warriors\u2019 and Coming Home to Hong Kong: \u2018The Craft Still Challenges Me\u2019 - 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