John Chong Ching is a

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

film producer A film producer is a person who oversees film production. Either employed by a production company or working independently, producers plan and coordinate various aspects of film production, such as selecting the script, coordinating writing, di ...

and presenter. He is one of the most successful producers of

Hong Kong cinema The cinema of Hong Kong ( zh, t=香港電影) is one of the three major threads in the history of Chinese language cinema, alongside the cinema of China and the cinema of Taiwan. As a former British colony, Hong Kong had a greater degree of po ...

beginning with the

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...

Bruce Lee Bruce Lee (; born Lee Jun-fan, ; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was a Hong Kong and American martial artist and actor. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that ...

and

Jackie Chan Fang Shilong (born 7 April 1954), known professionally in English as Jackie Chan and in Chinese as Cheng Long ( zh, c=成龍, j=Sing4 Lung4; "becoming the dragon"), is a Hong Kong actor, filmmaker, martial artist, and stuntman known for ...

in the 1970s and 1980s. He is now a veteran film producer of

Media Asia Group Media Asia Entertainment Group (), Media Asia Group (, ), is a Hong Kong production company and film distributor for films made in Hong Kong and throughout China. It is a subsidiary of Lai Sun Development Company Ltd. History Headquartered ...

, the company behind the ''

Infernal Affairs ''Infernal Affairs'' is a 2002 Hong Kong action thriller film co-directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak. Jointly written by Mak and Felix Chong, it stars Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang, Sammi Cheng and Kelly Chen. The film fo ...

'' trilogy.

Career

Chong has spent his entire career in the local entertainment scene. He started working for Television Broadcasts Ltd. (TVB), Hong Kong's premier television channel, and also wrote lyrics for

Cantopop Cantopop (a contraction of "Cantonese pop music") or HK-pop (short for "Hong Kong pop music") is a genre of pop music written in standard Chinese and sung in Cantonese. Cantopop is also used to refer to the cultural context of its production ...

songs. In 1994, he was working at a satellite network

Star TV Star TV may refer to: * E! (Canadian TV channel) (formerly Star!), a Canadian entertainment news channel * Las Estrellas (Spanish for The Stars), the Mexican television network * Estrella TV (Spanish for Star TV), the American Spanish-language net ...

Ltd. when he and six partners decided the time was ripe for an entrepreneurial approach to filmmaking. Dubbing themselves the

Seven Samurai is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai drama film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story takes place in 1586 during the Sengoku period of Japanese history. It follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who hire seven ...

, they aimed to reverse a sharp decline in the Hong Kong film business as moviegoers rejected the poor quality of locally produced films. They began taking lessons from Hollywood, insisting, for instance, that all their stars sign the detailed contracts necessary to distribute Media Asia's films overseas. Chong tightened controls on costs, and Media Asia earned $5.1 million on sales of $39 million, which is considered to be minuscule numbers by Hollywood standards, but in Hong Kong, a solid success. Chong continues to work as a producer for Media Asia, with his goal to expand in the

Mainland Chinese Mainland Chinese or Mainlanders are Chinese people who live in or have recently emigrated from mainland China, defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (PRC) except for Hong Kong ( SAR of the PRC), Macau (SAR of the PRC), ...

market, and to later take the company public.

References

External links

*
Business Week: John Chong Executive Director, Media Asia Group, Hong Kong
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chong, John Hong Kong people Hong Kong film producers Hong Kong film presenters Chinese film producers Living people 1959 births Asian film producers