TCCF Project: Peter Ho’s ‘Appetite for Desire’ Reflects on Greed, Exotic Foods and Disease (EXCLUSIVE)

American-Taiwanese actor and director Peter Ho (Wind and Cloud) is at the 2023 Taiwan Creative Content Fest with in-development film project Appetite for Desire.

The completed picture is intended to be a 120 minute film that tells the story of clout-chasing YouTubers Yong Cheng and Gao Wei who are introduced to a mysterious dish called Kappa meat by their high school classmate. The magic Kappa meat gives them temporary superpower which allows them to create more extreme video contents. However, as Yong Cheng and Gao Wei become more and more reliant on it, a darker secret about it is being revealed.

The inspiration of the film derives from the Asian eating habit of Shi-Bu, which is to eat therapeutically, producer Patrick Mao Huang at Flash Forward Entertainment told Variety. We aim to present a film filled with Asian culture and intended for the audience worldwide. The film is also being produced with Circle Luna and Content Digital Film.

In Asia, a nice dish is evaluated through color, aroma, and taste as well as the rareness and value of the ingredients. It is believed that whatever your body lacks, you can make it up with the food you eat, Ho says. The food people eat has also become a display of their social status. Over decades, people have found all sorts of unusual recipes to eat.

The script incorporates elements of humor, sarcasm and Hos contemplation on the impact of COVID-19. Among the first places where COVID was discovered was a wet market in Wuhan where exotic species were on sales. The human appetite for exotic animals, such as Kappa, remains insatiable.

I hope to reflect on human greed. Desire exists around us in many forms. People with greed will eventually fall into the Abyss until they are lost indefinitely, said Ho, who is an actor, director and multi-faceted artist with an established fan base. As an actor his credits include the Bu Jingyun character in Wind and Cloud (2002), Lui Fu-Kwan in Born to Be King (2000), and Gordon in Sophies Revenge. He also received the Golden Frame Award at the 6th National Geographic Photography Awards.

Appetite for Desire is budgeted at $2 million, of which $200,000 has already been raised. The movie will be filmed in both Taiwan and Japan and the project hopes to lean on Korean companies for special effects and computer graphics.

Our goal is to keep the audience thoroughly entertained during the film while also encouraging them to engage in introspection as they leave the theater, says Ho.