Kung Fu: Olivia Liang plays ‘butt-kicking hero’ in new trailer for The CW reboot

The trailer for The CW’s new female-led reboot of the classic 1970s series Kung Fu is upon us. Instead of David Carradine’s Kwai Chang Caine, the kung fu master at the center of this new series is Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang), a young Chinese American law school dropout who would rather defend the law with her fists and feet than with legal briefs.

In Kung Fu, Nicky goes through what The CW is describing as a “quarter-life crisis” that causes her to leave school and go to an isolated monastery in China. There, she learns that to truly master kung fu, she must find peace with her family. Easier said than done. 

As if that weren’t a big enough challenge, when she comes back to San Francisco, Nicky discovers that her hometown has become infested with crime and corruption. So, with her martial arts skills, Shaolin values, and ability to walk on air, Nicky keeps up with her training (by fighting gangsters ... hey, it counts) and declares war on the criminal element in her town. 

To be honest, very few of the show's plot details are in the trailer (the network's website also offers details that her parents are at the mercy of a powerful Triad and that Nicky is seeking the assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor who now has their sights on her). What is in the trailer, however, is a lot of shots of Nicky showing off her superior kung fu abilities on some really bad guys. Or, as her sister describes her in the trailer: she's "a kung fu butt-kicking hero." 

Check out the butt-kicking trailer below: 

Kung Fu also stars Kheng Hua Tan as Mei-Li Shen, Shannon Dang as Althea Shen, Eddie Liu as Henry Yan, Gavin Stenhouse as Evan Hartley, Tony Chung as Dennis Soong, and Tzi Ma as Jin Shen.

Christina M. Kim wrote the pilot episode and serves as executive producer/co-showrunner of the series with Robert Berens. Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Martin Gero, and David Madden also serve as executive producers. Hanelle Culpepper is directing and co-executive producing the pilot. Berlanti Productions and Gero’s Quinn House are producing the series in partnership with Warner Bros. Television.

Kung Fu premieres Wednesday, Apr. 7 on The CW.