In late 1990s and early 2000s, Hong Kong film industry adopted the Hollywood-style mass marketing techniques and had heavy reliance on casting Canton-pop music stars to cater the taste of youth market. Some successful examples are Nicholas Tse謝霆鋒 and Daniel Wu吳彥祖 in Gen-X Cops(特警新人類, 1999); the classic cinema couple Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng’s performance in Needing You(孤男寡女, 2000) and Love on a Diet (瘦身男女, 2001). But in late 2000s, as there is a trend of the collaboration of East Asia regional network, the pop stars cinema that cinema use are not limited to local star anymore, it extend to the context of the whole East Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In response to the regionalized film industry, globalizing the local is the to use the icons of East Asian popular culture and adapt them in Hong Kong Film (Lim, 2008). For example, using iconic figures from Japan manga and using the stars of the Korean-pop culture from music field, film and TV series. Guest appearances and special feature of popular East Asian stars in local movie is also a trend and strategy to draw audience interest thus to increase ticket sales in cinema. In this sense, Hong Kong cinema use regionally popular cultural as commodities to higher local film’s marketing value and to widen its audience base. In the following part, Initial D (頭文字D, 2005) will be taken as an example to illustrate the strategy of globalizing the local cinema.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Reference:

 

Lim, T. (2008). Renting East Asian popular culture for local television: regional networks of cultural production. East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, 33-52.