League of Legends series to be helmed by legendary martial arts director

Legendary Chinese film director Zhang Yimou is working on a League of Legends esports drama.

In a press conference today, the director of House of Flying Daggers confirmed he’s directing a TV series centered around League esports. Zhang explained the series will start filming in September, according to a translation.

Zhang said the series will be “targeted at young audiences.” He also claimed he wanted to do something “cool and different,” adding his grandchildren play League.

Zhang Yimou is a big-name director in China. He began directing in the 1980s and his 1990 film Ju Dou became the first Chinese film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Zhang continued to break through to Western audiences with the success of the martial arts movie House of Flying Daggers in 2004.

League fans are shocked such an enormous name in cinema is directing an esports series.

“It feels really weird to get a director of Zhang’s caliber to commit to a project and then just have him do a Freaky Friday esports show. Maybe the script is really good or something, but surely Zhang Yimou doing a lore series would be more hype,” one fan on Reddit summed up everyone’s feelings.

There are currently no details about the series, but more information should be revealed later this year with filming expected to start in September.