Type Public company Products movies Founded 1970 | Industry Film production Headquarters Hong Kong Subsidiaries Golden Village | |
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Key people Raymond Chow
Leonard Ho Stock price 1132 (HKG) HK$ 0.83 0.00 (0.00%)24 Mar, 4:00 PM GMT+8 - Disclaimer Founders Raymond Chow, Leonard Ho, Leung Fung | ||
Orange Sky Golden Harvest (OSGH) (Chinese: 橙天嘉禾娛樂集團公司) SEHK: 1132, previously known as Golden Harvest (Chinese: 嘉禾娛樂事業集團公司) from 1970 to 2009, is a film production, distribution, and exhibition company based in Hong Kong. It dominated Hong Kong box office sales from the 1970s to 1980s and played a major role in introducing Hong Kong films to the Western market, especially those by Bruce Lee (Concord Production Inc.), Jackie Chan, and Sammo Hung.
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History
Notable names in the company include its founders, the veteran film producers Raymond Chow (鄒文懐) and Leonard Ho (何冠昌). Chow and Ho were executives with Hong Kong's top studio Shaw Brothers but left in 1970 to form their own studio. They succeeded by taking a different approach from the highly centralized Shaw model. Golden Harvest contracted with independent producers and gave talent more generous pay and greater creative freedom. Some filmmakers and actors from Shaw Brothers defected. But what really put the company on the map was a 1971 deal with soon-to-be martial arts superstar Bruce Lee with the film The Big Boss, after he had turned down the low-paying standard contract offered him by the Shaws.
In 1973, Golden Harvest entered into a pioneering co-production with Hollywood for the English-language Bruce Lee film, Enter the Dragon (龍爭虎鬥), a worldwide hit made with the Warner Brothers studio and Concord Production Inc.
Golden Harvest supplanted Shaw Brothers as Hong Kong's dominant studio by the end of the '70s and retained that position into the '90s. Its greatest asset for years was that from the 1980s until very recently, it produced almost all of the films of Jackie Chan. Golden Harvest has also produced a number of films with Jet Li and Donnie Yen.
The Company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1994.
Golden Harvest's activity has declined in recent years. In 2003, they withdrew from film-making to concentrate on film financing, distribution, and cinema management in Hong Kong and in Mainland China.
In 2004, Li Ka-shing and EMI became shareholders of the company.
In 2007, Raymond Chow sold the company to Chinese businessman Wu Kebo, who owns the China-based Orange Sky Entertainment Group. In early 2009, Golden Harvest merged with Orange Sky and was renamed Orange Sky Golden Harvest (橙天嘉禾娛樂集團有限公司).
In 2009, Golden Harvest announced their relaunch and previewed a new trailer set for movies in 2010.
Cinemas
Orange Sky Golden Harvest has cinemas not only in Hong Kong, but also in Mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. Most of these are joint ventures. Golden Village is a joint venture with Village Roadshow responsible for the operation of Gold Class cinemas and Asia's first multiplex. In Malaysia, the group has two brands. One is Golden Screen Cinemas, a joint venture with Malaysia's PPB group, and the other is TGV Cinemas (formerly Tanjong Golden Village), which is a joint venture between Tanjong plc and GEMS of Malaysia. It has recently acquired Warner Village in Taiwan.