Producer Andy Lau hopes five-part drama will have “international appeal”.

Trading floor

Tencent Penguin Pictures has boarded Chinese-language mini-series The Trading Floor, which is being produced by Fox Networks Group Asia and Andy Lau’s Focus Television.

The five-part series, which starts shooting this week, is written and directed by KK Wong, whose credits include hit Hong Kong TV series The Election. The story follows a team of financial mercenaries in their attempts to conquer the financial market.

Hong Kong actor Francis Ng, Taiwan’s Joseph Chang and Chinese actress Yu Nan head that cast of the series, which also stars Poon Chang Leung, Jacky Cai, Carlos Chan and Jiang Qilin. Patrick Tam makes a special appearance.

Scheduled for release in autumn 2017, The Trading Floor will be broadcast on Fox channel SCM and also made available to viewers in mainland China on Tencent Video on a day-and-date basis.

Andy Lau said: “With its innovation in storytelling and multi-dimensional characters, we truly believe The Trading Floor will have great appeal to global drama viewers. We hope the series will create a new dimension to the Asian television production industry.”

Cora Yim, senior vice president and head of Chinese Entertainment at FNG Asia, said: “We are thrilled to partner with Tencent and Focus TV, and in particular, to have Andy Lau as the producer for The Trading Floor. Together with the amazing on-and off-screen talent and crew, we are bringing high value, top-quality Chinese content to our fans.”

Jeff Han, vice president of Tencent Penguin Pictures, said: “I believe the cooperation between Fox and Tencent Penguin Pictures can benefit each other and generate more than simply putting our resources together. Meanwhile, we hope that this can be a good example for the Chinese TV shows industry in the future.”