A Kai Ko Film From 2014 Is Finally Getting Released After His Father Paid $3.3mil For Its Movie Rights

In 2014, Taiwanese actor Kai Ko became the unofficial poster child for the consequences of drug use when he and Jackie Chan’s son Jaycee Chan were arrested after a marijuana bust in Beijing. Although he managed to avoid serious jail time, his then-burgeoning career took a massive hit. He was blacklisted in China and as result, his scenes in the um, monster hit Monster Hunt were cut while another one of his films, A Choo, had its release date pushed back indefinitely.

Last month, it was announced that A Choo, which also stars Taiwanese actress Ariel Lin, is finally coming out of its six-year cold storage and opening in cinemas this July. As it turns out, it was all thanks to Kai’s father, businessman Ko Yao-tsung. 

According to Taiwan’s Mirror Media, Yao-tsung spent NT$70mil (about S$3.3mil) to buy back the movie rights to A Choo so that he could have control over its distribution through his production company, Harvest 9 Road Entertainment, which he launched together with Kai last year.

The report goes on to say that Yao-tsung intends to use the success of A Choo as a benchmark to gauge his son’s popularity before working on the rest of his big comeback, which won’t come cheap — doting Papa Ko allegedly plans to splurge NT$50mil (about S$2.3mil) to acquire the script of a Chinese drama and let Kai be involved as a producer.

If that goes well, they will move on to the next step, which is to get him a guest appearance on an original drama by Chinese streaming platform iQIYI, and the gigs will presumably get bigger and bigger from there.

​Ever since his high-profile brush with the law, Kai hasn’t taken on any acting projects with the exception of 2016’s The Road to Mandalay, which earned him a couple of awards, and a cameo in 2017’s Mon Mon Mon Monsters.

The 28-year-old is said to have a keen interest in behind-the-scenes work and frequently invites many renowned showbiz veterans to Asylum, the bar that’s owned by his dad, to learn more from them. Guess he’ll have something to fall back on if being in front of the camera doesn’t work out well for him ever again.