Most fight sequences on a television show, probably any action adventure show that you know of, if you asked them how long they probably spend, [it's] one or two days doing the fight. Where we were spending eight days concurrently with an episode doing our fight sequences.
Alfred GoughAnd having those mystical elements you see in Asian cinema and certainly Asian martial arts cinema, it's something that we wanted to begin to introduce - the idea of spirituality and the idea of there being something else out in the world besides people who are great fighters.
Alfred GoughWith a television show, it's about fighting to get it on the screen every week. It's like going into battle, and you have to fight these fights. Some are big fights, some are skirmishes, some you can come to detente on, but it's always a fight.
Alfred GoughMiles and I had been looking to do a martial arts show for some time. Our first two movies that we wrote were "Lethal Weapon 4" and "Shanghai Noon" with Jackie Chan. Then we sort of got pulled into the superhero world, but then you look around at what's not on television and there wasn't really a martial arts shows. There are shows that do martial arts to a degree, but there's not a martial arts show.
Alfred GoughThey [movies] don't really have the cultural impact - other than "Star Wars," of course - that they used to because television is something that week to week people invite into their homes. It's a relationship that in success can go on six, seven, eight years. I think certainly in the early days, you definitely want that engagement.
Alfred GoughSo the idea was that, some catastrophic event had happened. There was a long dark age and then out of that, 100 years ago in this world, seven barons - these men and women - rose up and formed the new society. It's a feudal world, a part feudal barons and part warlord and part mob boss and they each control a huge resource so that there's an uneasy alliance, but they all need each other.
Alfred Gough