Edko Films made one of the splashiest announcements at this year’s Hong Kong FilMart, officially unveiling “Cold War 1994” – the long-awaited prequel to Hong Kong’s highest-grossing police action thriller series.
Executive producer Bill Kong, producer Ivy Ho and director Longman Leung were joined on stage by lead actors Terrance Lau, Tse Kwan Ho and Louise Wong. The event’s headline moment came with the surprise appearance of Tony Leung Ka-fai – who claimed his fourth Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor for his work in the original “Cold War” – setting off an emotional on-stage reunion with Lau that brought together two generations of the franchise’s iconic M.B. Lee character.
The film gathers an unprecedented ensemble of 10 Hong Kong Film Award best actor winners, anchored by four cinematic legends: Chow Yun-fat, Aaron Kwok, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Louis Koo. The announcement also marked the unveiling of 12 character posters.
The original “Cold War” and its sequel “Cold War 2” together took in over HK$100 million ($12.8 million) at the local box office, making the new prequel one of the most highly anticipated titles in the Hong Kong pipeline.
Kong framed the project as something deeper than a conventional franchise extension. “While sequels move the story forward, this prequel goes deeper,” he said at the event. “We are returning to the very source of the ‘Cold War’ universe, revealing how the power reshuffle in 1994 planted the seeds for everything that followed.”
Leung said the 1994 storyline had been quietly embedded in the franchise from its inception. “Beneath the surface calm of that era lay treacherous undercurrents,” he said. “Through a grander narrative canvas, audiences will finally witness the true origins of the ‘Cold War’ world and uncover answers to many long-standing mysteries.”
The film operates across two time periods. In 2017, the disappearance of Hong Kong’s newly appointed Secretary for Security, M.B. Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai), sets the drama in motion, drawing Commissioner of Police Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok) and Senior Counsel Oswald Kan (Chow Yun-fat) into a search for answers that leads back to a sealed classified file from 1994. That flashback thread unfolds against the twilight of British colonial rule, as the impending disbanding of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force’s Special Branch collides with the kidnapping of a prominent business tycoon, triggering a dangerous internal power struggle.
Daniel Wu heads the 1994 storyline as a calculating and driven senior police officer, Peter Choi, Deputy Commissioner of Police Operations – his first Hong Kong film role in six years. Lau portrays his counterpart, the idealistic Acting Chief Superintendent of the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau, M.B. Lee. Golden Horse Best Actors Wu Kang Ren and Tse Kwan Ho play the formidable Poon patriarch and son. Louise Wong takes on the role of triad leader Jodie Yuen, with Fish Liew playing a central figure within the Poon family. Louis Koo enters the franchise in the 2017 thread as Chief Executive-elect Adrian Yip Shun-ting.
The international cast includes Aidan Gillen playing the MI6 Head of Asia-Pacific and Hugh Bonneville cast as a British Cabinet Minister.
“Cold War 1994” is produced by Kong and Ho, written and directed by Leung, and is set to debut later this year.
English (US) ·