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===The star system===
As is common in commercial cinemas, the industry's heart is a highly developed [[star system (film)|star system]]. In earlier days, beloved performers from the [[Chinese opera]] stage often brought their audiences with them to the screen. For the past three or four decades, television has been a major launching pad for movie stardom, through the acting courses and widely watched drama, comedy and variety series offered by the [[Free television services (Hong Kong)|two major stations]]; [[Tony Leung Chiu Wai]] and [[Stephen Chow]] are two top names who began on the small screen. Possibly even more important is the overlap with the [[Cantopop|Cantonese pop music industry]]. Many, if not most, movie stars have recording sidelines, and vice versa; this has been a key marketing strategy in an entertainment industry where American-style, multimedia advertising campaigns have until recently been little used (Bordwell, 2000). In the current commercially troubled climate, the casting of young Cantopop idols (such as [[Ekin Cheng]] and the [[Twins (band)|Twins]]) to attract the all-important youth audience is endemic.
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====Mandarin movies and the Shaws/Cathay rivalry====
In Mandarin production, [[Shaw Brothers Studio|Shaw Brothers]] and [[Cathay Organisation|Motion Picture and General Investments Limited]] (MP&GI, later renamed Cathay) were the top studios by the 1960s, and bitter rivals. The Shaws gained the upper hand in 1964 after the death in a plane crash of MP&GI <!---國際電影懋業有限公司--->founder and head [[Loke Wan Tho]]. The renamed Cathay faltered, ceasing film production in 1970 (Yang, 2003).
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===Years of transformation (1970s)===
Mandarin-dialect film in general and the Shaw Brothers studio in particular began the 1970s in apparent positions of unassailable strength. Cantonese cinema virtually vanished in the face of Mandarin studios and Cantonese television, which became available to the general population in 1967; in 1972 no films in the local dialect were made (Bordwell, 2000). The Shaws saw their longtime rival Cathay ceasing film production, leaving themselves the only megastudio. The martial arts subgenre of the ''[[kung fu]]'' movie exploded into popularity internationally, with the Shaws driving and dominating the wave. But changes were beginning that would greatly alter the industry by the end of the decade.
====The Cantonese comeback====
Paradoxically, television would soon contribute to the revival of Cantonese in a movement towards more down-to-earth movies about modern Hong Kong life and average people.
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====Golden Harvest and the rise of the independents====
In 1970, former Shaw Brothers executives [[Raymond Chow]] and [[Leonard Ho]] left to form their own studio, [[Golden Harvest]]. The upstart's more flexible and less tightfisted approach to the business outmaneuvered the Shaws' old-style studio. Chow and Ho landed contracts with rising young performers who had fresh ideas for the industry, like [[Bruce Lee]] and the Hui Brothers, and allowed them greater creative latitude than was traditional. By the end of the '70s, Golden Harvest was the top studio, signing up [[Jackie Chan]], the kung fu comedy actor-filmmaker who would spend the next twenty years as Asia's biggest box office draw (Chan and Yang, 1998, pp. 164-165; Bordwell, 2000).
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===1980s-early 1990s: the boom years===
The 1980s and early '90s saw seeds planted in the '70s come to full flower: the triumph of Cantonese, the birth of a new and modern cinema, superpower status in the East Asian market, and the turning of the West's attention to Hong Kong film.
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====The international market====
During this period, the Hong Kong industry was one of the few in the world that thrived in the face of the increasing global dominance of [[Hollywood]]. Indeed, it came to exert a comparable dominance in its own region of the world. The regional audience had always been vital, but now more than ever Hong Kong product filled theaters and video shelves in places like [[Thailand]], [[Singapore]], [[Malaysia]], [[Indonesia]] and [[South Korea]]. [[Taiwan]] became at least as important a market to Hong Kong film as the local one; in the early '90s the once-robust [[Cinema of Taiwan|Taiwanese film industry]] came close to extinction under the onslaught of Hong Kong imports (Bordwell, 2000). They even found a lesser foothold in [[Japan]], with its own highly developed and better-funded [[Cinema of Japan|cinema]] and strong taste for American movies; [[Jackie Chan]] in particular became popular there.
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====Recent trends====
Efforts by local filmmakers to retool their product have had middling results overall. These include technically glossier visuals, including much [[Computer-generated imagery|digital imagery]]; greater use of Hollywood-style mass marketing techniques; and heavy reliance on casting teen-friendly [[Cantopop]] music stars. Successful genre cycles in the late '90s and early 2000s have included: American-styled, high-tech action pictures such as ''Downtown Torpedoes'' (1997), ''[[Gen-X Cops]]'' and ''[[Purple Storm]]'' (both '99); the "[[Triad]] kids" subgenre launched by ''[[Young and Dangerous]]'' (1996); [[yuppie]]-centric romantic comedies like ''[[The Truth About Jane and Sam]]'' (1999), ''[[When I Fall in Love...With Both]]'' (2000) and ''Love on a Diet'' (2001); and supernatural chillers like ''Horror Hotline: Big-Head Monster'' (2001) and ''The Eye'' (2002), often modeled on the [[J-Horror|Japanese horror films]] then making an international splash.
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