Shaw Brothers Studio facts for kids
The Shaw Brothers logo, modeled after the Warner Bros. logo
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Native name
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邵氏兄弟控股有限公司
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Formerly
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Shaw Brothers (HK) Ltd. (1958–2011) |
| Public company | |
| Traded as | SEHK: 953 |
| Industry | Film production Television production |
| Fate | Merged with Shaw Brothers to form a new Clear Water Bay Land Company Limited |
| Successor | Clear Water Bay Land Company Limited |
| Founded | 27 December 1958 |
| Defunct | 28 November 2011 |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
| Products | Films Television shows |
| Subsidiaries | Shaw Brothers International Pictures |
| Shaw Brothers Studio | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Shaw Studios, Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong
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| Chinese | 邵氏片場 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Shaw Brothers (HK) Limited (Chinese: 邵氏兄弟(香港)公司) was a very important film company in Hong Kong. It made movies from 1925 until 2011.
In 1925, three brothers named Runje, Runme, and Runde started a film company in Shanghai. They also set up a way to share their movies in Singapore. There, Runme and their youngest brother, Run Run Shaw, helped run the family's main company, Shaw Organisation.
Later, Runme and Run Run took over the movie-making part of their sister company in Hong Kong. In 1958, they created a new company called "Shaw Brothers." In the 1960s, Shaw Brothers built a huge movie studio called Movietown. It was one of the biggest private studios in the world!
This company made many famous movies. Some of their best-known films include The Love Eterne (1963), Come Drink with Me (1966), The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), King Boxer (1972), and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978).
Over the years, Shaw Brothers made about 1,000 films. Many of these became very popular Chinese movies. They also helped make kung fu movies famous around the world. In 1987, the company stopped making films for a while. They wanted to focus on TV shows through their company, TVB. But they started making a few movies again in 2009.
In 2011, Shaw Brothers changed its name to Clear Water Bay Land Company Limited. Other companies in the Shaw group took over the movie-making business. However, the company still makes TV shows today under the Shaw Brothers name.
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How Shaw Brothers Started
Before making movies, the Shaw brothers loved opera. They even owned a theater in Shanghai. Their father also owned a cinema. One play at their theater, The Man from Shensi, was very popular. So, the Shaw brothers bought their first camera. Runje Shaw turned this play into a silent film, and it was a big hit!
In 1925, Runje Shaw and his brothers Runde and Runme started a film company in Shanghai called Tianyi Film Company. Their first films, New Leaf and Heroine Li Feifei, were shown in Shanghai in 1925.
Another film studio tried to stop Tianyi films from being shown in cinemas. So, the Shaw brothers decided to create their own network of cinemas. Runme Shaw went to Singapore to set up a movie distribution business for Southeast Asia. In 1927, they opened their own cinema in Singapore. They soon expanded to Malaya and opened four more cinemas. By the 1970s, the Shaw chain owned about 200 cinemas in Southeast Asia! In 1928, Run Run Shaw joined Runme in Singapore.
In 1931, the Tianyi Studio in Shanghai made what some believe was the first Chinese talkie (a movie with sound). It was called Spring on Stage. In 1932, they made the first Cantonese talkie, White Golden Dragon. This movie was very successful.
In 1934, they opened Tianyi Studio (Hong Kong) in Kowloon to make Cantonese films. They moved their whole film operation from Shanghai to Hong Kong two years later. This was because the government had banned some types of movies. Tianyi was renamed Nanyang Productions. They also planned to build a film studio in Singapore in 1937 to make Malay films. This studio, called Malay Film Productions, made movies until 1967. A famous Malay actor and director from this time was P. Ramlee.
Shaw Brothers kept growing, but they faced problems during World War II. After the war, they started to rebuild. In the 1950s, Nanyang began making movies in Mandarin instead of Cantonese. This was because it was harder to get Mandarin films from mainland China.
In 1957, Run Run Shaw moved to Hong Kong. He started a new company, Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd. He built a huge new studio at Clearwater Bay. It officially opened in 1961 and was called Movietown. By the mid-1960s, Movietown was the biggest and best-equipped studio in Chinese filmmaking. It had 15 stages, two permanent sets, and 1,300 employees.
In the 1960s, movies about history and music were popular. Later, Kung fu films also became very famous. Some of Shaw Brothers' most well-known films were made then, like The Love Eterne and One-Armed Swordsman. One-Armed Swordsman broke box office records and led to many sequels. The studio made the kung-fu genre very popular. This included films like Five Fingers of Death and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin in the 1970s.
In the 1960s, Shaw Brothers had a big competition with another company called Cathay Organisation. But Shaw Brothers won, and Cathay stopped making films in 1970. Sir Run Run Shaw also got involved in television when TVB started in 1967. In 1969, Shaw Brothers (HK) became a public company.
In the 1970s, Shaw Brothers faced a new challenge from Golden Harvest. This new studio had great success with martial arts films, like Enter the Dragon starring Bruce Lee. Shaw Brothers then started working with Western producers to make films for a global audience. They invested in movies like Blade Runner.
However, Shaw Brothers stopped making films in 1986. This was because of strong competition and increasing piracy (illegal copying of films). They decided to focus on TV production instead. In 1986, Movietown became TV City and was used by TVB. In the 1990s, Shaw Brothers started making a few films again, but not as many as before. The company has since moved to a new location in Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong.
Important People at Shaw Brothers
Directors
Shaw Brothers was known for great film directors like King Hu, Lau Kar-leung, P. Ramlee, and Chang Cheh. King Hu directed Come Drink with Me, a martial arts film with a strong female hero.
Chang Cheh became the studio's most famous director. He made many action-packed films about brotherhood, like Five Deadly Venoms and One-Armed Swordsman.
Lau Kar-leung was a fight choreographer who became a director. He made highly praised kung fu films such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. P. Ramlee was famous for Malay romantic comedies.
Actors
Shaw Brothers worked like the old Hollywood studios. They had hundreds of actors who signed special contracts to work only for them. Different groups of actors worked with certain directors.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, actresses like Li Li-Hua, Ivy Ling Po, Linda Lin Dai, and Betty Loh Ti were very popular in dramas and romantic movies. The musical film The Love Eterne was a huge success. It starred Ivy Ling Po and Betty Loh Ti and was based on an old Chinese folk story. People loved it so much that some watched it over 20 times!
From the late 1960s, the studio made more martial arts films. The actors from the 1978 movie Five Deadly Venoms became very famous. They were known as the Venom Mob. This group included Lo Mang, Lu Feng, Sun Chien, Chiang Sheng, and Kuo Chui.
In the early 1970s, two other stars were very popular in director Chang Cheh's movies: Ti Lung and David Chiang. Ti Lung often played strong, muscular heroes. David Chiang was smaller and often played sarcastic anti-heroes. Chang Cheh, Ti Lung, and David Chiang were known as the "Iron Triangle" in Southeast Asia. Later, Alexander Fu Sheng became a big star, but he sadly died young in a car accident in 1983.
Famous martial arts actresses from Shaw Brothers include Cheng Pei-pei, Lily Ho, Shih Szu, Lily Li, and Kara Hui Ying-Hung. Cheng Pei-pei is well-known for her role in King Hu's Come Drink with Me. She also appeared in the more recent movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
How Shaw Brothers Influenced Others
Shaw Brothers films were very popular in Chinese communities. They greatly influenced later filmmakers, especially in the kung fu genre. These movies also became popular in the West in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino were influenced by Shaw Brothers. He even showed their logo in his Kill Bill: Volume 1 and 2 films. He also used styles from their movies.
The 2023 animated movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem also honored Shaw Brothers. In the movie, Master Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan) trains the turtles using clips from classic Shaw Brothers movies. These clips showed martial arts techniques from films like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Dirty Ho.
Movie Rights and Distribution
Many classic Shaw Brothers films were copied illegally because they were so popular. Celestial Pictures bought the rights to the Shaw Studio's old movies. They are releasing 760 of the nearly 1,000 films on DVD with improved picture and sound.
Karmaloop TV Deal
Karmaloop TV, a TV network, made a deal with Celestial Pictures. This means that kung fu and action fans in the United States can watch these digitally restored films. Many of them are shown for the first time on U.S. television in high definition. The deal includes over 60 martial arts movies that helped launch the careers of stars like Jimmy Wang Yu, Cheng Pei-Pei, Ti Lung, and Gordon Liu.
Shaw Studios Buildings
The old Shaw Studio was built in Clearwater Bay between 1960 and 1961. It was also where the TVB headquarters used to be. There are also apartment buildings there that housed Shaw actors. The site has been empty since 2003. In 2015, the Hong Kong government said the entire studio complex was important cultural heritage. Plans to rebuild the area now include restoring and keeping the old buildings.
A new Shaw Studios (with an "s" at the end) was built in Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate. It opened in stages between 2006 and 2008.
See also
- Celestial's Shaw Brothers Film Library
- Golden Harvest
- Hong Kong action cinema
- List of Shaw Brothers films
- Shanghainese people in Hong Kong
