‘Kung Fu’ Rights the Wrongs of Its Ancestor

This gender-flipped martial-arts reboot departs from its 1970s predecessor by having a predominantly Asian-American cast.

Nearly 50 years after David Carradine rose to fame as an enigmatic, half-Chinese Shaolin monk in the Wild West, “Kung Fu” is returning to network television in a new iteration on the CW. But this time, the gender-flipped reboot, which will be the first network drama to feature a predominantly Asian-American cast when it premieres Wednesday, is attempting to right some of the wrongs of the original series. In 1971, not long before starring in the high-octane films that made him internationally famous, Bruce Lee shopped around an eight-page treatment for a new television show called “The Warrior” about a Chinese martial artist who journeys across America’s Old West. Studio executives at Warner Bros. decided to pass on Lee’s pitch, which Lee said was because they thought American audiences wouldn’t watch a show with an Asian lead. A year later, Warner Bros. debuted a similar show on ABC called “Kung Fu,” with Carradine, a white actor with no prior knowledge of martial arts, in the lead role.