Hong Kong Box Office Became More Diverse as Releases Slumped in 2020

Vivienne Chow Documentary feature “Inside the Red Brick Wall,” which chronicles one of the most dramatic chapters of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, bagged the best film at the 27th Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards.The best director prize went to Peter Chan Ho-sun for “Leap,” a sports drama based on the trajectory of China’s national women volleyball team.

Vivienne Chow Twenty-nine projects from across Asia have been selected to take part in March’s Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), which will go virtual for the second time.Scheduled to take place March 15-17, 2021, HAF will run concurrently with the Hong Kong FilMart. Both events were postponed last year to August due to the pandemic and eventually migrated online.They will return to their usual March slot this year in tweaked virtual format.

Vivienne Chow The Hong Kong government will provide another $361 million (HK$2.8 billion) to rescue city’s troubled Ocean Park, which has seen losses increased by the effect of COVID-19. The venture is to be transformed from a traditional theme park into a travel destination and marine conservation hub that can be financially self-sufficient.The park will receive a one-off injection of $251 million (HK$1.67 billion) as working capital.

Happy birthday to a Hollywood legend! James Earl Jones celebrated his milestone 90th birthday on Sunday, and got a lot of love from some of his famous friends and fans.

James Earl Jones celebrated his milestone 90th birthday on Sunday, and got a lot of love from some of his famous friends and fans.Jones' booming voice, powerful gravitas and daunting screen presence have made him a true screen icon, and his impressive performances have left an indelible mark on pop culture throughout his nearly 70-year career.As the voice of both Darth Vader in and Mufasa in, Jones has been an unforgettable and integral part of so many generations of movie fans. His body of work

If there are any milestones worth noting this week, it’s that the Focus Features thriller Promising Young Woman crossed the $3 million in its fourth week in theaters. This weekend the Emerald Fennell-directed pic starring Carey Mulligan played in 1,333 theaters and added an estimated $430K to its box office till this weekend and is on track to earn $518K for the four-day Martin Luther King Jr.

Liam Neeson has a hit movie!

A Hong Kong Internet service provider on Thursday said it had blocked access to a pro-democracy website to comply with the city’s national security law. In a statement emailed on Thursday, Hong Kong Broadband Network said that it had disabled access to HKChronicles, a website that compiled information on "yellow" shops that supported the city’s pro-democracy movement and released personal information and pictures of police and pro-Beijing supporters during anti-government protests in 2019.

Get the stories that matter to you sent straight to your inbox with our daily newsletter.A talented musician who emigrated from Paisley to Hong Kong to pursue his career died suddenly on New Year’s Day.Davie Colquhoun had planned to return home to the town for good later this year.Tributes have flooded in from both the former colony and back home from his Paisley pals.The guitarist and singer - who died aged 72 of a suspected asthma attack - had become something of a celebrity of the Far

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe Hong Kong International Film Festival, delayed last year by the coronavirus outbreak, has announced plans to return to its normal Springtime slot.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNorth American box office revenues in 2020 hit a 40-year low, struggling to reach $2.2 billion in total amid the coronavirus crisis. Movie theaters were forced to stay closed for a significant portion of the year beginning in late March and struggled to recover when some cinemas were able to reopen months later in August.That resulted in an 80% year-over-year decline from 2019, according to Comscore.

made a controversial bet to make “Wonder Woman,” which premiered in cinemas on Christmas Day, simultaneously available on its streaming service, HBO Max. The company also said it was putting its entire 2021 slate of films on HBO Max, in order to bolster the nascent service and appeal to housebound customers.

A CNN reporter was accused Thursday of pushing China propaganda over a tweet linking the pro-Trump mob that stormed Capitol Hill to Hong Kong protesters acting in defiance of the Chinese Communist Party regime.  Following the violence that disrupted the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's election victory, CNN International correspondent Will Ripley juxtaposed an image of rioters climbing the exterior walls of the Capitol building with an image of protesters who crashed the Hong Kong

With an estimated $12.4B in global grosses, $10.2B of which came from the international box office, 2020 was off overall by 71% and 67%, respectively, from 2019 according to Gower Street Analytics. It’s a year the world at large would like to forget, but in industry terms it provided interesting phenomena to reflect upon even as we look ahead to 2021.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefU.S. President Donald Trump stepped up his actions against Chinese tech firms on Tuesday with the publication of an executive order targeting Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChatPay.The move pointed to a widening gulf between the western world still reeling from coronavirus and the chaos of the U.S.

coronavirus pandemic had huge effects on the film industry.The drop comes after five consecutive years of the box office topping £1.3billion, while 2020’s earnings came in at just £323m.The new report from Comscore revealed that revenues in the first three months of 2020 were up 20 per cent year on year, though fell dramatically when the UK’s first national lockdown was announced in late March.1917, released in January, was the top earner at the UK box office across 2020, with Christopher

Ever since the movie theater industry was gutted due to COVID-19, with many of the world’s cinemas being shut down in March until this fall, we’ve known 2020 was going to be a record bad year for the industry. But with the final 2020 box office numbers being reported, we can fully see just how the pandemic destroyed an industry.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe New Year weekend rankings give a bizarre indication of the havoc currently being wreaked on the Korean box office by the coronavirus, audience caution and stay at home orders. For a start, a Hollywood title scored a rare victory.“Wonder Woman 1984,” the most recently released film of international significance, took the top spot for the second weekend.

SUWANEE, Ga. – Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff is pushing back against Republican claims that he knowingly failed to disclose compensation from Hong Kong company PCCW Media Limited, which is connected to the Chinese government after he amended a campaign financial disclosure.

It was supposed to be a year when the playing field became even.