Alex Tse

Alex Tse (born 1976) is an American screenwriter and television show creator active since 2004. He was one of the creators and executive producers of the TV series Wu-Tang: An American Saga (2019-2023). Prior to that, Tse wrote the 2004 gangster film Sucker Free City, co-wrote the 2009 superhero film Watchmen, and wrote the 2018 film Superfly.

Tse grew up in San Francisco and attended Emerson College in Boston.

Background Alex Tse, a Chinese American, was born in 1976 to a banker father and a teacher mother. He grew up in the Richmond District in San Francisco. He went to Alamo Elementary School, Presidio Middle School, and Lowell High School in the area. When Tse was growing up, his parents were movie fans, and he was incidentally exposed to movies not appropriate for his age like Heavy Metal, Prom Night, and Altered States. He described Pulp Fictions influence on him:

Quote frame|I had never seen anything like it, in terms of narrative structure, characters, the character's point of view, all the pop culture references and humor. It seemed like it was coming from my own sensibility... though the world of Pulp Fiction is so fantastic and obviously not my world, it felt like these were characters who were speaking from the perspective of people in your world. And I don't know that a movie has done that since. He worked for under three years producing rap videos and working part-time jobs for Miramax Films and Walt Disney Pictures. For the film, Tse won a literary award from PEN Center USA for best teleplay, and he was nominated for best screenplay (original or adapted) for the 2006 Black Reel Awards. Tse developed a script for an untitled project for the singer Ashanti. He also developed a script for a remake of Super Fly (1972) for Warner Bros. and Silver. Tse's major screenwriting debut came when he was a co-writer for the 2009 superhero film Watchmen, which was directed by Zack Snyder. He and fellow screenwriter David Hayter were nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Writing for Watchmen. After Watchmen, Tse was attached to adapt the following films that went unproduced: 1961 children's book The Phantom Tollbooth and the 2005 science fiction novel The Traveler. In 2012, Tse said he was planning to make his directorial debut with 87 Fleer. Toward the end of 2013, Tse was hired by Columbia Pictures to write the script for a film adaptation of the racing video game series Gran Turismo. The Hollywood Reporter called Tse "one of the bigger names in genre screenwriting" for his work on the following films that went unproduced: a remake of The Crow, a live-action remake of the anime film Ninja Scroll, a film adaptation of the graphic novel Battling Boy by Paul Pope, and a remake of Highlander.

Tse optioned in 2014 the rights to the 2010 graphic novel Tribes: The Dog Years by Michael Geszel and Peter Spinetta with an interest in writing and producing a film adaptation. In 2017, the film was in development with Tse executive producing with Joel Silver's Silver Pictures. Later in the year, Sony Pictures bought the rights to Super Fly to remake the film based on a script by Tse. The remake, titled Superfly, premiered in June 2018. In the following October, Hulu ordered the ten-episode drama Wu-Tang: An American Saga, a series about the American hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. The series, which premiered in September 2019, was created and written by The RZA and Tse.

In 2023, the film Gran Turismo was released, with Tse and Jason Hall credited for the story (Hall and Zach Baylin were credited for the screenplay).

Credits

+ Tse's credits Year Title Medium Notes 2004 Sucker Free City Television film Writer 2009 Watchmen Feature film Screenplay by Tse and David Hayter 2018 Superfly Feature film Writer 2019 Wu-Tang: An American Saga Television series Creator, writer, executive producer 2023 Gran Turismo Feature film Story by Tse and Jason Hall; screenplay by Hall and Zach Baylin

Personal life Tse's favorite films include Annie Hall and Major League.