Shannon Lee (Shutterstock/Andrew Walker)

Shannon Lee is keeping her father’s legacy alive in a new action series.

Shannon was only 4 years old when her father, legendary martial artist and action star Bruce Lee, died.

In 1993, about 20 years after Bruce’s death, the Lee family suffered another tragedy when Shannon’s older brother, Brandon, died following an on-set accident during the filming of the cult action horror film The Crow.

Being the only one of Bruce’s children who is still alive, Shannon is determined to keep her father’s legacy alive for generations to come through various projects. One of them is Warrior, a new action series exclusively available on Cinemax.

Warrior is not just a regular action series. It took almost 50 years in the making because it is based on Bruce’s original script and, in addition, it almost lost its chance to make its way to the small screen due to the reluctance of the Hollywood elite back in the 1970s.

“At the time, the obstacle was that the studio just did not believe in casting a Chinese lead for American TV shows and so my father was not able to get the project off the ground at the time,” Shannon said during a recent phone interview.

After Bruce died, the Warrior script stayed in the Lee family’s possession for decades. In the early 2000s, Shannon took over the family business and headed the Bruce Lee Foundation. It was during this time that she stumbled upon many of her father’s unreleased writings and one of them was the original story of Warrior.

“At the time, I was very busy trying to get a number of different things going so I was not able to work on it. So, I just put it in the bag and let it be,” she said.

Unbeknownst to Shannon, the story of a Bruce’s script, which was rejected by Hollywood, had become somewhat of an urban legend among filmmakers. Several years later, Shannon got a call from director Justin Lin, whom she had met briefly. He asked her to verify whether the existence of the script was true or not.

“I said yes it was a true story and in that I have it. He [Justin] took a look at it and he said that it was really good and that we should make it the way Bruce Lee wanted it to be made that was respectful to him and his legacy,” Shannon said.

“In a lot of ways, I needed somebody like Justin, who believed in the project but also believed in my father’s legacy,” she added.

Bob and weave: Warrior is a new action-packed series based on legendary martial artist Bruce Lee's original script.(Cinemax/Graham Bartholomew)

The two then agreed to bring Bruce’s script to life and together they co-produced Warrior.

Warrior is a gritty action-packed crime drama series set during the brutal Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the second half of the 19th century.

“He [Bruce] picked this time period, 19th century America, because it was a time when Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans endured severe hardships. My father was very good at finding stories that needed to be told,” Shannon said.

The series tells the story of Ah Sahm, portrayed by Andrew Koji (Fast & Furious 6), a prodigal martial artist who emigrates from China to San Francisco under mysterious circumstances and becomes a hatchet man for one of Chinatown’s most powerful tongs (Chinese mobsters).

Other than Koji, Warrior also features an ensemble cast of Asian actors such as Indonesia’s Joe Taslim, who portrays Li Yong a Kung Fu master who is also a lieutenant in a tong family.

While Warrior was written almost 50 years ago, its narrative on immigration, racism and xenophobia are somewhat relevant today especially with the rise of ultranationalism among world leaders, including United States President Donald Trump’s administration, which puts a heavy focus on blocking immigrants from entering the US.

Shannon said she had no intention of using Warrior as a social commentary on today’s global politics and believed that it was purely coincidental.

“While the topic of immigration has become front and center in America as of late, we started working on this show before the current administration came to power, and so it’s just a coincidence that immigration has become a much more relevant topic,” she added.

Nevertheless, Shannon said she thought the story of how Warrior came to be — from the original script by Bruce to how 1970s Hollywood producers rejected it — showed just how much the world had changed, but there was still a lot to be done and talked about.

Real casting: Joe Taslim is one of many Asian actors that shines in Warrior.(Cinemax/Graham Bartholomew)

“It [Warrior] is very much designed by my father and in particular the issue of representation in Hollywood for Asian actors is a topic that my father was challenged with in his lifetime as well and is an issue that continues today,” Shannon said.

In the end, she hopes that through Warrior, today’s audience will be able to recognize Bruce as more than just a Kung Fu legend who kicked bad guys’ asses in classic action films.

“I think I would like for my father to be recognized for his creativity because he came up with the idea for this show and I also think that he, in his lifetime, always wanted to tell authentic stories involving martial arts and Chinese culture.”

Bruce fans can expect a lot more from Shannon in keeping her father’s legacy alive as she said that Warrior was just one of the many projects that was in the pipeline to celebrate his life.

“It is an honor to be his daughter. He was a remarkable human being,” Shannon said.

Some of these projects were upcoming exhibitions on Bruce’s life in Hong Kong and Seattle, according to Shannon.

“I have also written a book, which will be coming out this year, about my father’s philosophy [...] The reason that I got involved in looking after my father’s legacy is because I believe he lived in a very inspiring way and his philosophy is very inspirational and can help a lot of people.”