Wong Jing Trades Bosco Wong for Kenneth Ma in New TVB Drama
Veteran director Wong Jing (王晶) is returning to TVB to prepare for a big-budget drama in order to help them battle increased competition from local stations. The new drama will also be a collaboration with mainland China. It will feature a carefully selected star-studded cast including HKFA Best Actress Deanie Ip (葉德嫻), current popular TVB siu sang Kenneth Ma (馬國明), and Hawick Lau (劉愷威), who is highly popular among the mainland audience.
The new drama is estimated to have 35-40 episodes, all under the management of TVB executive, Catherine Tsang (曾勵珍). It will be heavy in taste, coordinating with the mainland market. Deanie will act as the mother to Kenneth, Hawick, and Tong Fei (童菲).
An insider revealed that Wong Jing had initially wanted to ask Bosco Wong (黃宗澤) to play Kenneth’s role, since he is popular in mainland. However, Bosco is busy filming Young Sherlock <少年神探狄仁傑>. Furthermore, “Kenneth is well behaved, and he doesn’t pick scripts to film for. Known as a Diamond Bachelor, he has a very good image. TVB is also determined to promote him. Wong Jing is very satisfied with this cast, and he believes it can help pull ratings,” the insider added.
HKTV’s Ricky Wong (王維基) saw Wong Jing’s move as if he is helping TVB in the war between the two broadcasting companies. “That sounds like an overstatement.” Wong Jing replied after hearing about Ricky’s comment. “What has he [Ricky] done in the television industry?” As far as Wong Jing knows, Ricky is just a foolish man who does not know how to invest properly. He does not believe that TVB is threatened by HKTV.
“TVB dramas were strongly successful in the past, because they aired worldwide. Dramas are truly good when other places say they’re good. Nowadays, few people from mainland watch TVB dramas. There’s not a lot to earn from filming in Hong Kong. This is why we’re heading in a larger direction.” Wong Jing said.
This article is written by Shirley for JayneStars.com.
oh please wong jing glad you picked kenneth! for everyone’s information kenneth just won MOST OUTSTANDING TV ARTISTE AWARD 2012 voted by 10 different factions of HK filmmakers: directors, producers, scriptwriter. which means kenneth is the true TV king since he also got second place in audience voting last year! kenneth is both filmmakers and audience favourite! kenneth and hawick in a drama with deanie ip will be wonderful!
Hey you forgot to send congrats to Angelababy who also won the award of most charming female actress in the eyes of the professional people by the same HK filmmaker federation :D. Last year the winner is Moses 😀 for the same one.
that’s not an outstanding award in tv or movie so it doesn’t mean much. can’t help it if they think her plastic face is ‘charming’.
Angelababy might have undergone plastic surgery, but that doesnt mean that she’s not ‘charming’. charm stands for more than just looks ya know
This award’s name is even more prominent than the outstanding ones :P. It has the word “Voted by professional people” in. And too bad, these 2 awards to Angelababy and Nic Tse from HK filmmaker federation are the biggest ones, not the outstanding ones :P, go and read.
what so funny that moses won? At least LF didnt win anything. lol
also funny how all of the LF movies that flopped in the box office did not get any nomminations at HK film awards.
Why is LF being dragged into this? Confused.
an award voted by fellow filmmakers is better than some very ‘popular’ star who don’t even get anyhing 🙂
@unknown: Because Selina or Sel_fi_wu is a Moses hater, simply so. LF dun win it, so what? The world is still peaceful and he still has hundreds of other awards. Playing award show, who will win :P?
Moses and Angelababy – Sel_fi_wu’s hatred artists, won :P. If she says the award is uncreadible for them, then she has to look back to her beloved MM.
It’s a joke to Sel_fi_wu, so don’t attack me back as it won’t work :P.
@Crystal: Because they want to attack me but it’s so funny.
Kenneth is well behaved, and he doesn’t pick scripts to film for. Known as a Diamond Bachelor, he has a very good image
I also like this description. it’s spot on! we all know there are artistes who are picky with scripts and can reject series just because they don’t want to shave their head or because they want to take a vacation with girlfriend.
Because he has the right to choose and a basement to do so as he can gain much more money than staying in Txb. Can’t compare. If your MM can leave Txb, I doubt that he wants to deny the chance.
Even in this planned series, MM is simply a replacement to Bosco due to the favourism of Txb, not that Wong Jing picked MM himself due to talent or blah blah.
wong jing is happy with the cast. how would you know that wong jing didn’t pick him? assumptions.
The article said it. Wong Jing didn’t pick MM, he picked Bosco but Bosco is having Young Detective Dee so Txb assigned MM to Wong Jing and he accepted to have MM in his cast.
Here is the sentences:
“An insider revealed that Wong Jing had initially wanted to ask Bosco Wong (黃宗澤) to play Kenneth’s role, since he is popular in mainland.”
“TVB is also determined to promote him.”
Feeling bitter because your hated Bosco is picked while your loved MM is just a replacement?
asumptions assumptions. till now, i notice most of the english articles in here dont even correlate to waht the actual artists says. You keep assuming things and make it looks like the truth.
wow up to you if you want to totally believe this article fox. Understood that you’ll always be bias against kenneth 🙂
Look at yourself Selina :P. I don’t even care that MM is really a replacement to Bosco or not, but I teased you for your bitterness.
Kenneth doesn’t pick scripts, the producers pick him. He doesn’t have a choice.
Selina aka Sel_fi_wu hinted about LF who has the right to pick scripts and refused in a Txb series recently. MM is of course dun have the right to pick scripts because of his current status. Having the right to choose script is a big honor in Txb as it’s normally exclusive for the non-management contracted veteran artists, so you can smell the bitterness from Selina :P. She tried to make the assignment of role from Txb a good thing, but it isn’t.
we all know there are artistes who are picky with scripts and can reject series just because they don’t want to shave their head or because they want to take a vacation with girlfriend
What’s wrong with that? It means he has standards and he knows that producers or sponsors would still flock to him even if he doesn’t bend to their beck and call. Don’t be jealous just cuz your bias doesn’t have the ability to be able to do that yet.
2013 is the year for Catherine Tsang to push her band up by all Txb’s money. Since most of 620’s faves spend their time heading to north to earn real gold, the world in Txb is given to Catherine Tsang’s side. Maybe even if Bosco can finish Young Detective Dee before this series starts, Catherine Tsang will still use all of her power to pull Bosco out and get her people in. Doesn’t matter much because 620’s band already have the things they want – popularity in China and money there. They are paid 300-500k per eps there while Catherine Tsang’s ppl only can get 1/10, from 30k to max 80k/eps. Guess that Catherine is trying hard to control the HK market when letting 620 to conquer the China market.
who will believe this conspiracy theory from a raymond lam fan?
Believe or not, it is still the truth
You can’t change the fact that your MM is only offered 40k/eps for a series in China while Bosco has at least 250k :P. So it isn’t a theory, it’s an analysis.
don’t know getting more and more dislike him. Never see him look good in any photos.
He has this gu wa look in him.
Good luck to you.
Congrats to Kenneth for winning the Most Outstanding TV Artise 2013 award and also getting an opportunity to work with a star-studded and award winning cast in Wong Jing’s production. This serves as a great learning opportunity for him. Looks like 2013 is a great year for kenneth eh?
agree. 2013 is a great year for kenneth. besides all you said, On call 2 might be anniversary series and he’s also a hot favourite for TV King 2013 :). great year!
yeap. am looking forward to on call 2 but i have doubts whether it’d surpass expectations because tvb has a history of destroying sequels and with so many cast added into a mere 25 episode series, i’m afraid it’ll be a disaster
Oh it’s a mistake. I purposed to reply you, not Funn Lim =.=
In short: The cast hasn’t determined officially yet. They haven’t had Hawick.
@Fox:
lol. it’s alright. yeah that i’m aware of. But Deannie, a multi-award winner being present in the series itself is enough IMO.
I only wonder why Susan Tse after winning Best Actress with HKFA still agree to film minor roles in Txb series?
maybe because she has reached an age where it doesnt matter anymore and treat acting as merely a hobby?
“Wong Jing Trades Kenneth Ma for Bosco Wong in New TVB Drama”
Is the title correct? I almost had a heart attack, thinking Wong Jing ditched Kenneth and replaced him with Bosco. But reading the article, it is more like Wong Jing trades Bosco Wong for Kenneth Ma in new TVB drama.
Correct me if I am wrong.
you’re right, the title is wrongly structured. rest assured, the final decision is ma ming.
HALLELUJAH!!
The only one confirmed for this series is Deanie Ip, said by Wong Jing. The rest of the cast is still discussing. In the end, this series really can happen or not, it’s a mystery because Wong Jing is still busy with his comedies.
Very true — pretty much nothing is confirmed yet…even Deanie’s participation technically isn’t confirmed yet either. Earlier, when Deanie was asked whether she would return to film for TVB, she didn’t reply directly — all she said was “if Wong Jing asks me to film something, I’ll definitely film it because he helped me out so much in my career”. Sure, this can be taken as ‘confirmation’ in a way, but at the end of the day, whether it really happens depends upon scheduling and such.
By the way, sounds like everyone is forgetting that technically, this isn’t a “TVB series” — it’s an outsourced production that Wong Jing’s company (based in Mainland) will be filming…TVB pretty much just has the exclusive airing rights to the series. So even if Deanie and Hawick do film it, they technically aren’t ‘working’ for TVB…
Lookin forward to it as long as Wong Jing actually puts some effort into his scripts, not like those cheap-o movies he churns out.
meant to write he puts effort into his TV scripts. his movies after the mid-90s are terrible.
His recent TV series isn’t any better than the new Hulk, ah sorry, Young and Dangerous. 7 stars in foot of Kau Chung and Tsui Tse Lin, even worse than Txb’s creation.
wong jing is a fkcung idiot. tvb dramas suck and the new tv station dramas trailers look way more entertaining than anything tvb has done recently, besides that really gay looking vampire drama trailer, it looks pretty gay.
he’s arrogant for a guy that just debases all the films and shows he works on, formulaic and ingenuine plots and direction, maybe he’ll incinerate tvb further with his experienced “touch”, prob do HKTV a favor. Ricky Wong is laughing inside at this destructive move.
more reason to skip tvb’s dramas since they keep putting weird faces like priscilla on and boring storylines like GPS whatever. now a horrible director to boot, disaster in the making. even Deanna Ip cannot save. Bosco is lucky he dodged this one. itll be career suicide. poor kenneth.
It’s too early to judge considering that so many things are still yet unconfirmed. We’ll see…
kenneth is just a replacement but nothings confirmed yet! plus there is going to be an andy lau series i anticipate that more
@Jake: Good luck waiting on the Andy Lau series….it might never happen (especially since it’s been rumored that Andy might actually write the script himself — given his schedule, that’s virtually impossible).
Just as a point of reference — back in 1999/2000, when Andy returned to accept a special award from TVB, he publicly stated during his acceptance speech that he was interested in filming for TVB again and that he is actually not as ‘expensive’ as people think…of course there were rumors at that time (just like there are now) that he may return to do another series for TVB…that was 13-14 years ago and still hasn’t happened yet….I highly doubt that it will happen now given that Andy has a child (plus he said himself during his Telling Maria interview that he does plan on spending more time with his family in the coming years — he will still come out with a movie or 2 every year and a concert every couple years, but the focus in his life will definitely be shifting).
Agree. I doubt that Andy would come back to film for TVB. Even though he has significantly reduced his workload, working for tvb would mean uncertain schedules. For a man who’s family oriented, i highly doubt he’ll film for tvb. He also mentioned that he wants another child? so yeah, the possibility of him filming for tvb is only 5% or less i reckon
A part of me wish Patrick Tam could film this too. I love his previous collabs with Deanie Ip.
Ohhhh, hes certainly much much more admirable than KM. haha…lol…but Patrick Tam in doing pretty good in mainland as well so hard to cast him at this point.
It’s hard to say actually, since Patrick is Deanie’s god-son, so he may decide to film if she asks him to, regardless of how he is doing in Mainland. In fact, Patrick did a webchat recently to promote his latest Mainland series and when asked about possible future collaboration with TVB (and possible another collab with godmother Deanie), he said he’s open to the opportunity. Bottom line is that it doesn’t matter how he’s doing in Mainland — if his schedule permits and Deanie asks him to, there’s a huge likelihood that he’d be willing to do it.
deanie didnt even know who kenneth was that was funny at the awards
ya i forgot about that. makes it even more funny now.
I have never heard of Bosco being Wong Jing’s pick until this article.
Kenneth has always been the choice since new came up that Wong Jing is going to produce a series for TVB.
This cast new came before Bosco’s Sherlock’s news.
Not looking forward to this series. TVB needs to stop trying to cater to mainland audiences or collaborate with mainland stations. I don’t know how successful TVB’s series are in mainland when they collaborate with mainland stations but they never perform well in HK. The Conquest and Growing Through Life had low ratings and the grand production the Drive of Life only had mediocre ratings. This series probably won’t perform any better than TDOL if it even does that well.
Quality over quantity.
I think TVB should focus the quality of the cast and the script.. instead of trying to win the upcoming television stations.
I think if tvb focuses on an interesting, good script and a good balance of cast, tvb would be successful. If they’re trying to beat other television stations but don’t care about the quality or whatnot, they won’t go far.
What we need is from tvb: new/refreshing drama with a strong cast and a strong script! If they aim for this drama, they would be successful..
Also by focusing on these aspects, they won’t need to worry because people/audience would be thinking “Wow, TVB has some really good dramas” instead of “This is a crappy drama like always” mentality.
This is most likely just a rumor nothing is confirmed yet and based on the previously reported plot if drama revenge it sounds like another Heart If Greed series and quote frankly I didn’t even think it was that impressive but that’s what the majority of audience like to see.
None of the cast is confirmed yet, I skit think the rumor of Bosco is true since Wong Jing didn’t say anything. I’ve always found Bosco to be the more proficient and versatile actor among his peers at TVB including Kenneth he’s one of the few that can actually act in TVB. Winning awards don’t mean anything. Not everyone is satisfied with their performance, I’m not saying he dont deserve the award but winning one doesn’t mean hes the better actor than the one who didn’t win.Kenneth’s role in THC got too much praised for what he deserved. He was good but not to the point where he should win Best Actor. He exceeds well in certain roles
In the past article mentioned that Eric Tsang wanted to invite Deanie Ip to film with TVB and Kenneth will act in the same serie with her. I haven’t heard that Bosco was the first choice until this article.
Wow, Hawick & Kenneth, both attractive men <3 I like, I like, hihihihi
Now Deanie Ip will know who Kenneth is LOL. I’m glad that Kenneth finally got this chance to shine! He once said that he yearned to go to mainland but he had too many jobs in HK. Well, Wong Jing’s production is huge! Should appreciate it. I grow up watching Wong Jing’s films.