Hong Kong's Golden Harvest head their AFM slate this year with the new Jackie Chan actioner, First Strike: Police Story Four. The movie opened in Hong Kong in mid-February. Harvest are also taking Chan's previous film, the racing drama Thunderbolt, to the market.
New Line opened Chan's Rumble in the Bronx in the US on February 23 to a massive publicity blitz, and with the film now at number one in the box office, Harvest are hoping to capitalise on this.
Harvest took Thunderbolt, second only to Rumble in home BO last year, to MIFED: "We're still doing follow up sales," says Cheung. Harvest will also be taking their art-house drama Christ of Nanjing.
Harvest represent some smaller producers at markets, and will be taking the United Film Makers organisations He's a Woman, She's a Man, a popular gender bending drama. "there may be more product from UFM in the future," says Harvest's Gordon Cheung. Harvest will also represent Film Workshop/Tsui Hark's The Blade, an excellent and raw kung-fu drama, in exhibition at Berlin.
"We have some good new product that unfortunately wasn't ready in time for AFM," says Cheung. This includes Shu Kei's Ho-Du-Man, featuring screen legend Josephine Siao fong-fong, Ann Hui's (Summer Snow) new stunt girl movie, and the all star historical drama Soong Sisters, directed by Mable Cheung.
Golden Harvest was founded in 1970 by Raymond Chow, and has had successes with movies featuring stars like Bruce Lee and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The company is Hong Kong's largest production house, and also picks up around 5-10 independent films a year, which it represents at markets outside of Asia.
The company also have a distribution and exhibition arm, Golden Harvest Entertainment, which was set up in 1975 to serve their own productions. Harvest have listed their distribution and exhibition arm on the stock exchange, and currently operates cinemas in Hong Kong, Macao, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. The company recently signed to distribute SKG Dreamworks product throughout Asia (except Japan).
Richard James Havis
