Home video distributor Shout! Studios has acquired the worldwide rights (excluding select Asian territories) to the Golden Princess movie library – a deal that Variety reports will “electrify action film aficionados” because the Golden Princess library is “a treasure trove of 156 Hong Kong cinema classics that’s been MIA from Western markets for decades. The deal, which brings together Hollywood’s indie powerhouse with one of Hong Kong cinema’s most prestigious catalogs, includes genre-defining works from directing legends John Woo and Tsui Hark, alongside star-studded vehicles featuring Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Leslie Cheung.“
The line-up that is now in the hands of Shout! Studios includes “Woo’s action masterpieces Hard Boiled, The Killer, the complete Better Tomorrow trilogy, Bullet in the Head, and Once a Thief. The library also boasts Ringo Lam’s City on Fire, Prison on Fire and its sequel; Eric Tsang’s Aces Go Places; Tsui’s Peking Opera Blues; Tony Ching’s Chinese Ghost Story trilogy; and additional hits like Wai Ka-fai’s Peace Hotel, Andrew Kam and Johnnie To’s The Big Heat and Alex Law’s Now You See It, Now You Don’t.” And a whole lot more – as was said earlier, this deal involves 156 movies. The deal was worked out by Shout! Studios’ David McIntosh, Jordan Fields, and Taylor Devorsky, with Golden Princess Amusement Co., Ltd.’s Dickson Lai and Ronald Chu.
Jordan Fields, Shout’s senior VP of acquisitions and originals, had this to say: “This is a big one. Golden Princess sits alongside Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest in the pantheon of Hong Kong cinema, but unlike the other two, the Golden Princess library has been dormant for decades outside of Asia. Its fingerprints are all over modern action and crime genres, though, so we have big plans to reintroduce these fabled titles to the rest of the world, complementing Shout!’s growing catalog of revered Asian films. We have big plans for home video. We know that audience and will super-serve them.” Their plans also include bringing some of these films to theatres.
Dickson Lai, executive director of Kowloon Development Company Ltd., the parent company of Golden Princess, said: “The films in the Golden Princess Library are akin to the sword in the stone. Shout! is the entity capable of unlocking its potential.“
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