The live-action Dynasty Warriors movie in production by a Hong Kong-based movie studio has a new trailer (embedded above), and it's possibly good news if you like the series: The movie is clearly taking the spirit of the games and running with it.
Opening on a series-staple riff of butt rock guitar, the trailer shows off stars Louis Koo, Wang Kai, Tony Yang, and Gulnezer Bextiyar in costume and combat. It is absolutely all-in on the Dynasty Warriors aesthetic: Heroes swing their weapons and dozens of normal soldiers go flying. Louis Koo's Lu Bu swings his weapon and literally shoots a bolt of lightning into a formation. Guan Yu comes flying out of the sky like a meteor into the battlefield and he is literally on fire.
Did I mention that Guan Yu is played by Han Geng, an ex-kpop singer from Super Junior and known as the "Dancing King" in China? I'm glad about it, honestly. It feels like such an over-the-top series warrants the star-studded megabudget treatment.
The movie covers the first two chapters of Dynasty Warriors' take on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Yellow Turban Rebellion and the coalition battles against Dong Zhuo. And it'll clearly include a melodramatic Lu Bu and Diao Chan romance sequence: There's a bit of clutching at each other as Lu Bu's absolutely bananas five foot long hat feathers blow in the wind.
The Dynasty Warriors movie is directed by Roy Hin Yeung Chow, an acclaimed Hong Kong director whose movie Nightfall won him "Best New Director" at the 2013 Hong Kong Film Awards. The very first trailer for Dynasty Warriors was shown all the way back in 2018, but COVID-19 delayed the film's release to this year. It'll be out on April 30th in China, but there's no official western release announced at the moment.
