history of hk film industry in 100 words

Thanks to everyone who commented on the “intro” post! The stuff I do isn't half as interesting as the artists, haha.  But in any case... have been thinking a lot about the prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Hong Kong and China film industry. This directly impacts my company, my job, and ultimately what I would want to do long term.  

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Right now, it's not a pretty industry.  But, before that, to look back briefly on the all too familiar history of Hong Kong movies over the last 20 odd years...

1980s and early 1990s were the golden years.  Everyone loved Hong Kong cinema.  Karaoke and Hollywood movies had not quite completely taken over the world yet.  In fact, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat were all getting recognition in Hollywood.   There really were four heavenly kings (for those who were born in the 1990s). Golden Harvest even scored a US$130m box office hit in the US with TMNT.  Films made money, everyone was happy.  Well, mostly, except when certain sticky issues came up and certain syndicates were reportedly involved...

Forward to the mid to late 1990s, we saw everyone getting really jittery about the handover, which happened without event, and then we got completely blindsided with the Asian financial crisis.   Personally, my stocks (where I had put my entire savings at that point into) dropped over 90%. Pirate VCDs spread like wildfire, and Hollywood movies overtook HK movies in the box office.   The party was over but no one quite realized it at that point.

By 2000s, we had the internet crash, SARS, tax raises, Article 23, mass rallies to get rid of Tung Chee Hwa, and in general all things bad.   And surprise again, my stocks lost another 90% in value.  Actually this time was closer to 95%. Production dropped from something like 250 in the 1990s to about 60 a year.  I think it's maybe 50 this year. 

Now I'm sure I've left out a lot, but well, this is a blog entry, not a thesis.

So, now what?  China has somewhat come to the rescue.  Box office there is grown maybe 30% every year, and surprisingly – the same Hong Kong stars we watched in the 1990s, are the ones that still pull in the tickets.  I have no idea why.  I'll think about it and write on it some other time.  In any case, so we are seeing massive Hong Kong-China co-productions these days.  A couple big Hong Kong stars.  A couple big Chinese stars.  Throw in lots of money.  Build lavish sets.  Period/costume drama, ideally.  Hire Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, or Feng Xiaogang.  Think .  is just way off the charts in terms of its success so that is really not representative.  And ta-da!  You have a film that is will get a huge release in China, and you can most probably get the rest of your money back from sales in other parts of the world.   And in China, even if the film completely sucks, everyone still watches it so they can yell and scream how bad it is. 

But... what happens to everyone else? 

TBC...