What ever happened to Golden Harvest?

[Guest Gwailos Forever]

I've never been quite sure as to what happened with Golden Harvest. I know the Hammerhill Studios closed a few years back, they sold off their back catalogue of films to Media Asia and production went really quiet, but are they still making films?

The last GH films I can remember are movies like 'A Man Called Hero' and 'Tokyo Raiders'. If I'm correct wasn't the sequel 'Seoul Raiders' a Media Asia production, not even GH? And wasn't Jackie Chan signed exclusively to GH so what happened there?

Any info on GH and Raymond Chow's activities would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks

[Guest BKarza]

I wondered the same myself. I know the govt. made them give up the land where they had the studio. K.C. Ho died. Not sure why production slowed and then stopped. Maybe Heung sent some boys over to see Chow.

[Guest Gwailos Forever]

Surely one of you guys can help me with this query?! Running Man, MarkGway?

Please help!

Thanks

[Linn1]

and they more or less got out of making movies. They are now mainly a distribution company that produces a film every once in a while.

[Guest andyovan]

They still own some movie theaters in HK. That's about all I know.

[Guest W Hong]

Any info on GH and Raymond Chow's activities would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks

I was once able to talk to Roberta Chow, Raymond's daughter, on the phone when she was working for Rim Films Distribution. I guess that was at around the mid-1990's. Surprisingly, however, I didn't know that she was Raymond's daughter until after that phone call. I found out when my cousin told me about her being related to the famous GH movie producer.

So at that time, Rim Films was nice enough to let me have some kind of promo ad for Lau Kar Leung's "Operation Scorpio" and a pretty big color lobby card/promo for "Mary from Beijing"(Gong Li).

I still think that "Oper. Scor." is a very good kung fu comedy that I was lucky enough to see in a theatre, which was that Glendale, CA theatre that Rim Films took over for a short time before it closed down. I also remember seeing "OS"'s trailer in a Chinese language theatre in the San Gabriel Valley. But I think that was during the fun times in the early '90's when all of these new and old HK movies were still being shown in theatres here in L.A. and also S.F., Berkeley, etc. That was before the New Line/Miramax situation which is probably one of the reasons why San Gabriel's Kuo Hwa Theatre went out of business. Take this, for example:

On Chinese New Year Day in 1995, I saw the HK version of "Rumble in the Bronx" at the Kuo Hwa. Based on what I remember, it looked like a packed theatre. A year later, New Line/Miramax buys the U.S. rights to a lot of HK movies, which meant that the new Jackie movies("Thunderbolt", "Mr. Nice Guy", "The Accid. Spy") couldn't be shown in theatres like the Kuo Hwa anymore. Otherwise, maybe those could've been hits at the Kuo Hwa and Garfield Theatre which would probably have kept them in business a little longer. And I know that the VCD's and other things made them close down. But on the other hand, the Heroic Grace Series was a hit here at UCLA. So w/ that along with Dragon Dynasty's plans and Tarantino re-opening the Sing Lee Theatre, maybe there is a slight chance that the new and old HK movies will be shown somewhere, and not just on DVD.

[Guest HungKuen]

Didn't Golden Harvest close down after Leonard Ho passed away?