The Projector | Hong Kong cinema is not dead, as recent Chinese box office successes show
- Having been sidelined by mainland blockbusters for years, Hong Kong films are back with a vengeance
- This summers biggest Chinese-language action movie boasts a Hong Kong director, cast and setting
The same mantra seemed to have worked in mainland cinema, as ever more extravagant domestic blockbusters soared to success. Hong Kong filmmakers, once seen as supporters, if not saviours, of a fledgling movie industry, were becoming marginalised, and considered a spent force in a market flush with human and financial resources.
The success of Wu Jing’s Rambo-aping Wolf Warrior 2 (2017; with box-office takings of 5.7 billion yuan/HK$6.26 billion) and Frant Gwo’s sci-fi epic The Wandering Earth (2019; 4.4 billion yuan) seemed to show how mainland filmmakers had turned the tables on their haughty southern counterparts. In the face of this massive cinematic rise, Hong Kong directors seemed destined to become a historical footnote.
That narrative has been blown to smithereens. The Chinese box office charts for the past two months are dominated by Hong Kong productions, or films featuring a predominantly Hong Kong crew.
With box-office takings of 1.4 billion yuan, the most successful Chinese-language action film in the mainland this summer was The White Storm 2: Drug Lords , a Hong Kong-set thriller with a Hong Kong cast (led by Louis Koo Tin-lok and Andy Lau Tak-wah) and directed by Herman Yau Lai-to (The Untold Story [1993], The Leakers [2018]).