Bruce Lee Anime “House of Lee” Announced

In celebration of Enter the Dragon‘s 50th anniversary, special 4K UHD screenings of the movie will be held in over 650 theaters on Sunday, August 13, and Wednesday, August 16. They will include the “House of Lee trailer”, which you can watch below.

The team at Bruce Lee Entertainment, the production and creative IP arm of the Bruce Lee Family Companies, had been looking to do a Bruce Lee animated project for years. Shannon Lee was ultimately inspired by personal experiences to create the story behind House of Lee. “Anime is an amazing medium for telling a truly creative story where Bruce Lee can be Bruce Lee, she said. “I’m so excited for the possibilities for action, fantasy, history, culture, and creativity within this medium.”

House of Lee is an action/fantasy series that sees Bruce Lee fighting to assemble his Dragon Warriors before the world plunges too far into darkness and shadow. It takes inspiration from the famous Bruce Lee quote, “Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.” Through a community campaign — something Shibuya specializes in — the company and Bruce Lee Entertainment have been able to produce the project independently.

Shannon picked Shibuya as a partner after seeing its White Rabbit anime short, co-created by Yang, known in the web3 space as Pplpleasr. “I love Emily and Shibuya’s perspective,” Lee said. “They are such creative, hard working, skilled artists with an amazing brand, I just knew that they would be perfect collaborators. The organic way it all came together spoke volumes of our potential collaboration, and it’s been great!”

Shannon Lee had seen White Rabbit through Dennis Chang, Managing Partner of Bruce Lee, LLC. “He connected us and she told me about her House of Lee project which is an anime about the Lee family legacy,” Yang said. “I found myself immediately resonating with the narrative as it touches on themes of spirituality, the battle against your inner demons, and so many aspects of the AAPI experience. It being such a personal story, Shannon wanted to really retain creative control and ownership. At Shibuya, our mission is to help creators do just that and so I knew this was something we had to be a part of.”

Our Take

Much like that Elvis Netflix Cartoon that was approved by Elvis’s widow Priscilla a while back, it makes sense that Bruce Lee would also have something Animated about him as well. And as an added bonus, it’s approved by his daughter Shannon Lee. Much like Elvis, Bruce Lee is not only immortalized as a popculture Icon, but widely considered to be one of the greatest martial artists who ever lived! His impact in the Popculture Zeitgeist has inspired everything from Videogame characters, Cartoons, parodies and even and in some aspects, Anime itself. So it’s kind’ve a big “Full Circle” moment that this would happen.

We here at B.B. will give further updates as this project progresses.