Naman Shrestha
Created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk, Netflix’s ‘The Brothers Sun’ is a black comedy action series that revolves around a well-established and settled Taipei gangster named Charles “Chairleg” Sun. When he hears the news of his father getting shot by a mysterious assassin, he rushes to the City of Angels in order to protect his strong-willed mother and his naive younger brother Bruce, who is oblivious to the truth about his family.
Bruce’s life gets turned upside down when he learns about the secrets of his family and has to adapt to the gangster life that the rest of his family is used to. As Taipei and Los Angeles serve as the canvas for the action-packed drama, the audience is left wondering if the show is filmed on location or not.
The Brothers Sun Was Shot in California and Taiwan
‘The Brothers Sun’ is filmed in California and Taiwan, specifically in Los Angeles County and Taipei City. According to reports, production of the inaugural iteration got underway around mid-June 2022 and continued through the following three months or so, before getting wrapped up in September of the same year.
Los Angeles County, California
The shooting for a majority of ‘The Brothers Sun’ was carried out in Los Angeles County, where the production team mostly utilized the locales and facilities of the home of the Hollywood industry — Los Angeles. Besides the City of Angels, the city of San Gabriel, which lies in the San Gabriel Valley of LA County, also hosted the production of the Michelle Yeoh starrer.
Since Justin Chien’s character, Charles Sun, gets involved in several action sequences in the show, he was asked about his preparation for the role during a conversation with Screen Rant. Chien shared, “I have a background in Muay Thai and jiu-jitsu. I’ve been doing Muay Thai for about 10 years, and jiu-jitsu for the last four, I just got my blue belt, but I was really lucky to be training under the tutelage of Justin Yu, Michael Lair, and Eric Brown, who are all from the original John Wick films. I was lucky, I had a three-month stunt training period before we started production. And so in a week, it was a maximum of 10 or 11 sessions of stunt training, choreography, weapons training, and weightlifting to get my body ready for the role.”
Speaking about the most challenging aspect of his role, Chien explained that besides the volume of the choreographed fights he had to go through, the importance of precision is what he picked up the most. He added, “…every strike, the amount of flick involved, the breath behind it, the emotion behind it, all of that has to be dialed in addition to where my punch lands on a camera or if it’s actually I’m making contact, how pure that contact is. That’s something that’s different from real fighting that I’ve learned is the importance of precision. Not that it’s not important in real fighting as well, but more so in film fighting.”
Taipei City, Taiwan
The capital of Taiwan, Taipei City, also serves as a prominent production location for ‘The Brothers Sun.’ Situated in Northern Taiwan, Taipei is the residing area of Charles Sun in the show. Thus, a few key portions, especially the ones including Chalres, are lensed on location. In the backdrop, you are likely to notice some local buildings and monuments, such as Taipei 101, the Presidential Office Building, Bangka Lungshan Temple, and the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.
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