US television network AMC announced it will produce a martial arts drama inspired by the famous classic Chinese tale Journey to the West, South China Morning Post reports.
The series, which is tentatively titled Badlands, will consist of six one-hour episodes. It is set to premiere late next year or early 2016, AMC said on its official website.
The drama is loosely based on the popular 16th-century Chinese fantasy Journey to the West, a story that details pilgrimage of a legendary Buddhist monk who travels west in search of sacred writings, along with the Monkey King and other fantasy characters.
AMC's reproduction of Journey is created by Smallville's Al Gough and Miles Millar. The screenwriter and producer duo have previously worked with Chinese martial arts elements in films, including the Jackie Chan action-comedy Shanghai Noon and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which stars Jet Li.
Two Hong Kong figures will also join the production team: director Stephen Fung and filmmaker Daniel Wu.
Badlands, on the other hand, tells the story of a warrior and a young boy who embark on an adventure across a dangerous land to find enlightenment.
AMC, short for American Movie Classics, is home to some of the most successful TV series.
The series is the network's third "straight-to-series order", after hit zombie show The Walking Dead and a prequel of the Emmy-Award-winning Breaking Bad.
Many audiences were delighted with AMC's announcement, some quoted as saying "AMC has produced many great and well-received series. I have high hopes for their reproduction of China's Journey to the West."
Other fans of the Chinese classic remained skeptical and expressed their concerns to whether the series turn out to be another version of "Saint Saiya" (a Japanese fantasy animation that's largely popular in China).
This is not the first time that US showbiz has taken interest in Journey. In 2001, American film The Lost Empire took inspirations from the Chinese classic. The script was so different from the original story that some netizens called the change "worse than that in 'A Chinese Odyssey' (a remake of Journey by Stephen Chow that's known for its absurdity in screenwriting.)"
From Disney's Mulan to AMC's reproduction this time around, Chinese elements have increasingly gathered interests of US film and television producers. However, the cultural differences between the two countries and how they are to be expressed in the scripts remain an unavoidable topic of discussion.
Internet user "Zhengshu-1024" says "AMC's slow paced series may play out well for the reproduction of Journey to the West, but personal heroism that's commonly expressed in Western works is also inescapable. Eastern philosophy has always been a pain for Western writers."
The news has also generated buzz on Sina Weibo. As of 11:00 today, the topic "US version of Journey to the West" has been read by more than 2 million users, with 4,660 participating in discussions.
The original series of Journey to the West aired in China in 1986. Since then, it has been remade domestically for at least 8 times, some versions deviating heavily from the original story.
Aside from Journey, different versions of other Chinese classic literature such as A Dream of Red Mansions and Three Kingdoms has also been remade, causing a "chaos" in the television industry.
In 2011, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a ban on remake of the four classics Chinese literature (Journey to the West, A Dream of Red Mansions, Three Kingdoms and The Water Margin), and the ban is still effective in China today.