Hong Kong film director Wong Kar Wai is expected to delight fans once more, this time with his first foray into television, movie trade magazine Variety reported.

The 62-year-old, known for his richly-saturated sets and atmospheric soundscapes, is set to produce, as well as direct the pilot episode of Blossoms Shanghai, which will star Hu Ge, a Shanghai native.

The show is a television adaption of the 2012 novel Blossoms by Chinese novelist Jin Yucheng. The book, a rare example of a novel written in Shanghainese, has won multiple awards, including the prestigious Mao Dun Literary Prize in 2015.

Working alongside Wong is a team of established creatives, including award-winning Shanghainese screenwriter Qin Wen, as well as Academy Award-winning cinematographer Peter Pau, known for his work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).

Hu, who is known for his work in period drama Nirvana In Fire (2015) and recently acted in The Wild Goose Lake (2019), an arthouse movie , will play the series' main character - a young opportunist with a troubled history.

Set against a period of economic expansion and growth in 1990s Shanghai, the series follows Hu's character in his pursuit of wealth and glamour.

Blossoms Shanghai is, to a large extent, a homecoming for Wong.

Although the director of arthouse favourites like Chungking Express (1994) is often associated with the Hong Kong film industry, Wong was born in Shanghai.

In a statement, Wong said: "Jin Yucheng's landmark novel Blossoms has been the perfect backdrop to visualise and share my love for my birth city."

"With the series," the director added, "I would like to invite the audience to immerse in the intrigues of Shanghai and its inhabitants in the early 1990s, an exciting time that paved the way for the prosperity of modern Shanghai."