Bride of Chucky, Freddy vs. Jason: Ronny Yu’s Hollywood films, and why the Hong Kong director took on a film about kung fu kangaroos

Ronny Yu is known for Hong Kong films like The Bride With White Hair, but among directors from the city his Hollywood career was second only to that of John Woo

Yu directed Freddy vs. Jason and Bride of Chucky – the success of both gave him a reputation for horror in the US – as well as a film about kung fu kangaroos

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Ronny Yu at an interview with the Post in 1998. We take a look at the Hong Kong director’s Hollywood films, from a family movie about kung fu kangaroos to horror films like “Bride of Chucky”. Photo: SCMP

Published: 4:15am, 21 Jan 2024

When talk turns to Hong Kong directors who have made a splash in Hollywood, Ronny Yu Yan-tai is rarely mentioned. But after John Woo Yu-sum, Yu achieved the most success of any of the Hong Kong directors who worked in the United States.

One of Yu’s four English-language films, Freddy vs. Jason, was a bona fide hit in the US. Released in 2003, the high-profile slasher movie held the top spot at the box office for two weeks.

Yu’s Bride of Chucky, the fourth instalment in the Child’s Play series, fared less well at the box office in 1998. But it still made a healthy profit, and went on to become a camp classic among cult horror fans.

The success of both films gave Yu a reputation for horror in the US, and led to him directing a chilling episode of the NBC television horror series Fear Itself in 2008.

Brigitte Lin and Leslie Cheung in a still from Yu’s “The Bride with White Hair” (1993).

Yet Yu was not known as a horror-film director in Hong Kong, although he had made a couple of ghost films, and horror movie The Trail, early in his career.

Yu’s career coincided with the rise of Hong Kong New Wave filmmakers in the early 1980s, and he directed dramas, action films and comedies. He came to the forefront in the 1990s with operatic martial arts fantasy The Bride with White Hair, one of the classics of the genre’s revival.