Shout! Nabs Golden Princess Library, Promising Asian Film Fans 100+ Titles Of Classics For Western Release

Variety’s Naman Ramachandran got the exclusive word on Monday that Shout! Studios has acquired the global rights to Golden Princess library of Hong Kong classic films. That’s a reported number of 156 titles that the boutique label will have on its catalogue for the foreseeable future.

It also means that films by auteurs such as John Woo, Ringo Lam and Eric Tsang – included in the library – will finally get restorations with a number of features, in addition to bumping up the label’s own streaming stock. This is a total win for a plethora of reasons, especially for anyone who has been championing the collection of physical media as long as the next person with the ever-foreshadowing posterity of streaming becoming a factor.

The acquisition’s crown jewels include 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.”

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“This is a big one,” said Shout’s Fields, who is senior VP of acquisitions and originals. “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.”

Read more at Variety.

Lead image: Chow Yun Fat in “Hard Boiled (Golden Princess Film Distribution)

Lee B. Golden III

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