Streets of Myth

A live action web-series set in an alternate-universe, contemporary England where every neighbourhood is a fiefdom and every wrong look can end in blood.

WHY READ WHEN YOU COULD WATCH? SEE OUR PROOF-OF-CONCEPT SHORT FILM HERE!

At first glance, the Birmingham in Streets of Myth looks a lot like ours. The buildings look about right. The clothes are the same. The kids listen to hip-hop and hard rock. Birmingham's neighbourhoods are roughly the same too: Aston, Digbeth, Nechells, The Jewellery Quarter & more.

But instead of a city, they are a loose collection of gangs and petty rivalries, tied together and policed by the weakened and corrupt forces of The Crown. These gangs aren't quite like our gangs though. They don't have guns.

They have swords, spears and the ancient martial traditions of the Far East. Each neighbourhood has their own power structure, their own laws and their own fighting style.

The Streets of Myth are a place that lies at the intersection of DJ's and dim-maks, kings and graffiti, B-boys and bloodied swords.

 

Back (way way back) in the 90's, there was this kid called Brandon. He lived in New Jersey and watched too much television. On one fateful day, that bad habit proved useful. Because on that day, some channel decided to show a clip or an ad or something for a Jackie Chan movie.

"What in the HELL WAS THAT!?" said my sad little teenage brain. How can anyone move like that and where, exactly,  does someone learn to flip around a giant ladder?? So my obsession, like millions of others, was born.

And not even a very good Jacking Chan film at that...

And not even a very good Jacking Chan film at that...

I watched them all. I memorised the moves. I bought DVDs direct from Hong Kong. I took kung-fu classes. I even memorised the lines IN CHINESE.

Flash forward: New York City, 2005

The idea hit me like an angry Sammo.  I had just seen a few wuxia films (as I tend to do, I think one was Hero) and looked up at the canyon of skyscrapers that is Manhattan. BAM! That was it.

Modern Urban Wuxia.

A few films from South East Asia have gone down that road in one way or another, but I have yet to see someone dressed like Method Man move like Jet Li from rooftop to rooftop with an ancient sword in his hand. That's what Streets of Myth is all about.

It's like Game of Thrones in a hoodie doing jump kicks. It's The Warriors directed by Lau Kar-Leung. It's Akira Kurosawa and King Hu turning a Wu-Tang record into a sweeping epic.

Flash forward: Birmingham, UK, 2011. I start thinking of the Streets of Myth again. It occurs to me that Birmingham is responsible for the Industrial Revolution and Heavy Metal and JRR Tolkien. Shakespeare was from up the road. I start looking around and the Midlands has a pretty vibrant martial arts scene.

Seriously don't mess with him.

Seriously don't mess with him.

It all starts making sense. 

After a lot of writing. A lot of planning. A lot of meetings and thinking and pondering, we're on the verge of turning this into a reality.