HK's a blockbuster, movie moguls say (hktdc.com)


	Oscar-winning Scott Ross says Hong Kong is leading Asia in producing global cinema content

	Warren Franklin, CEO of Rainmaker Entertainment, predicts Hong Kong’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie will be huge worldwide

	Magic happens at Cyberport, Hong Kong’s IT flagship, where top young movie-making talents are incubated

Hong Kong is poised to be a global entertainment provider and win major market share from Hollywood, leading special effects movie-makers agree.

During a recent visit to the city, Oscar-winning Scott Ross (Titanic, What Dreams May Come), and Warren Franklin (The Abyss, Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park) said they were "blown away" by the creative talent they'd discovered in Hong Kong.

A visit to two state-of-the-art studios – Centro Digital Pictures and Imagi International Holdings Ltd – convinced them that Hollywood's loss will be Hong Kong's gain.

"In five to 10 years, I can see 70 per cent of global (film) content being generated outside the US," said Mr Ross, CEO of AWOL Pictures, founder, former Chairman and CEO of Digital Domain and an eight time Academy Award nominee.

The future is in Asia, and Hong Kong is "without a doubt" ready to step up, he said.

Total solution

Rising costs and increasing frustrations meant movie-makers were looking to move out of Hollywood, said Mr Ross, adding that he himself was in town looking for partnership deals.

"There are great opportunities in places like Hong Kong, where you can form relationships with international writers, finance movies for significantly less than in the US, make distribution deals throughout the world, and create high level digital imaging to take the film to market."

Mr Ross was a keynote speaker at the Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum (DELF) held in March at Cyberport, Hong Kong's IT flagship, as part of the Entertainment Expo. In addition to winning an Oscar for the ground breaking visual effects in Titanic (the highest grossing movie of all time), his company Digital Domain received nominations for True Lies, Apollo 13 and 1, Robot.

Mr Ross admits to having an "arrogant attitude" when invited to visit Hong Kong studios, expecting that he'd "seen hundreds like them around the world". But at Centro and Imagi, "I was knocked out", he said. "They were not creating content for either a Hong Kong or a pan-Asian audience, but for a global market."

Centro, he pointed out, has been making animated films for Disney, while Imagi created the newly released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles re-make, which he predicts will do "incredibly well" globally.

Turtles to be ‘huge'

Warren Franklin, CEO of Rainmaker Entertainment, Canada, said he was "blown away by the content being produced in Hong Kong". The man whose company also made high-profile films such as The Da Vinci Code agreed the "Turtles" would be "a huge movie" internationally, which would be great for the future of the Hong Kong film industry.

Encouraging smaller companies to believe in themselves, Mr Franklin said the big US studios "don't know how to make movies any more". "They don't understand the technology – it is foreign to them," he said. Smaller, tech-savvy studios have control over their own destiny, he said, if they can master original content.

"That content will come from creative talent, which may be within your own company," Mr Franklin told the delegates at DELF 2007, which showcased how cinema is moving towards digital content creation.

"You need to scout for talent – like the guys and girls working on the "Turtles" – and train them to become creative leaders. The talent is amazing here, able to compete with any talent in the world. It's just a question of how to get out of the service providing mentality, and get into providing content."

Miracle in the making

Lorraine Justice, Director of the School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, agreed Hong Kong has some "incredibly talented" young technicians, content producers and directors. The university incubates its top talents in the high-powered environment of Miracle at Cyberport, where overseas scouts are "constantly coming to us looking for young talent".

Rita Cahill, Principal of RTC Productions, US, concurred that companies like Disney are looking for talent in markets like Hong Kong, China and India. "They know they can't enter these countries solely on their own, and they want partnerships."

Cyberport is a HK$15.8 billion (US$2 billion) landmark IT project wholly owned by the Hong Kong Government, and managed by Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited. The 24-hectare project is comprised of four office buildings, a five-star hotel, a retail entertainment complex and a deluxe residential community, all interconnected by a state-of-the-art broadband network. Its aim is to create an interactive environment that will be home to a strategic cluster of about 100 companies and 10,000 professionals in the IT and related creative industries.