Hong Kong director Derek Tsang has as many expectations of himself as others have of him. He spoke to Mathew Scott about the momentum driving the industry and his career and why he feels the best is yet to come. 

Derek Tsang is coming off a year like no other, what with a history-making Oscar nomination and now a gig shooting Netflix’s much-anticipated adaptation of the lauded Chinese sci-fi epic, The Three-Body Problem.

But still the Hong Kong director believes the future just might get even brighter. 

Tsang says he feels the “momentum” is building behind his own career as much as it has been for content from across Asia.

“Definitely the past couple of years have really felt like there’s a demand for more Asian content, be it feature films or streaming content,” says Tsang. 

“People across the world want a good story, and sometimes good stories come from a different country. As a filmmaker, I just hope I can improve and do better and greater stuff in the future.”

The 42-year-old Tsang started the year out with a Best International Feature Film Oscar (93rd Academy Award, 2021) nomination for his Better Days, a gritty and most contemporary drama set in mainland China and centred around school bullying and minor crimes. 

It was the first-ever Oscar nomination for a Hong Kong film directed by a native Hong Konger, and followed on from the haul of nominations Tsang received for the romantic Soul Mate (2016). Soul Mate was his first time out as a solo director after sharing the job with compatriot Jimmy Wan for rom-com Lacuna in 2012.

Now comes his first stint working for the world’s biggest streaming platform as Netflix takes Chinese author Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem global. 

The Three-Body Problem is a multi-layered epic that sees humanity preparing for a future alien invasion. The source material was the first Chinese novel to win the sci-fi genre’s prestigious 2015 Hugo Award for its author – streaming rivals Tencent Video are also currently working on an adaptation.

Speaking from London where he is shooting two episodes of the series, Tsang says he was originally approached for The Three-Body Problem by the team behind HBO’s Game of Thrones. They had seen Better Days and were impressed. 

“They were looking for Chinese directors,” he says. “They checked Better Days out, they loved it, and we got together for a Zoom just to meet, and then they really wanted me to hop on board. I’m just super excited to be part of it.”

Rights to the English-language adaption were secured by Netflix from The Three-Body Universe and Yoozoo Group.

The Three-Body Problem and two sequels are produced by Bighead Littlehead (Game of Thrones) as part of a broad multi-project deal that also includes feature film, Metal Lords. The team includes David Benioff & D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones) and Alexander Woo (True Blood), who ''have experience tackling ambitious sagas over time and space,” Netflix said when the series was announced in September 2020. 

Tsang points to recent Asia-led big- and small-screen global successes such as the Jon M. Chu-directed Crazy Rich Asians and, of course, Squid Game, as indications of how quickly the world has warmed to accessible content from the region’s talent base.

“Before, you know, a lot of people would say, our audiences don’t want to read subtitles, they don’t have the patience for that,” says Tsang. 

“But this pandemic has just really proven that to be wrong. So now everybody is hungry for international content, not just Asian content, but I mean like a good story that can travel well across different cultures and different nations.”

The Three-Body Problem gives Tsang the opportunity to expand his own audience, along with his creative talents.

“It’s certainly a learning process for me too, because it’s such a huge production,” he says, adding: “There’s a lot of CGI or VFX elements... so every day, I’m learning a lot from the wonderful people that I work with right now. It’s just been very valuable.”

Published in ContentAsia December 2021 magazine