Legendary Hong Kong producer Run Run Shaw dies at 107

PanARMENIAN.Net - Pioneering Hong Kong film producer Run Run Shaw, whose studio popularised the kung fu genre which influenced Quentin Tarantino and other Hollywood directors, has died at the age of 107, according to Belfast Telegraph.

A statement from Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), which he helped found in 1967, said Shaw died peacefully but gave no cause of death.

His Shaw Brothers Studios, once among the world's largest, helped launch the careers of powerhouses including director John Woo and churned out nearly 1,000 films. He also produced a handful of US movies, including 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner and 1979 disaster thriller Meteor.

His television empire, which remains a dominant force in Hong Kong, nurtured actors who later rose to fame, such as Chow Yun-fat. Wong Kar-wai, the director behind critically acclaimed art-house movies like Chungking Express and In The Mood For Love, got his start through a TVB training course and worked at the station briefly as a production assistant.

Ironically, one actor who slipped through Shaw's grasp, Bruce Lee, went on to become the world's biggest kung fu star.

Shaw (pronounced Shao in Mandarin) led TVB until retiring as chairman in December 2011 at the age of 104. He is survived by his second wife and four children from his first marriage. Shaw was born near Shanghai to a wealthy textile merchant. His exact birthdate is unclear, and different Shaw-related websites say he was born in 1906 or 1907.

One of his six siblings, elder brother Runme Shaw, set up a silent film studio, Unique Film Production Co. Shaw and a third brother, Runje, went to Singapore in 1923 to market films to south-east Asia's Chinese community and eventually opened 139 cinemas across the region.

After surviving the Second World War, the company was faced with growing competition from rivals in Hong Kong and Singapore, so Shaw moved to Hong Kong in the late 1950s to modernise the firm. He shifted focus from exhibiting films to producing them and renamed the company Shaw Brothers.

His path to Asian film-making dominance began in earnest in 1961 when he opened Movie Town, a vast, state-of-the-art studio in Hong Kong's rural Clearwater Bay. With 1,500 staff working on 10 soundstages, Movie Town was reputed to be the most productive studio in the world. At its busiest, actors and directors churned out 40 movies a year, most of them featuring kung fu, sword fighting or Asian gangsters known as triads.