Hong Kong Legends
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| The standard Hong Kong Legends DVD border strip. The image is a composite of stills, including Bryan Leung in Legend of a Fighter, Brigitte Lin in New Dragon Gate Inn, Jackie Chan in Drunken Master and Jet Li in Hitman, plus the company logo. | |
| Industry | Video production and distribution |
| Founded | 1999 |
| Defunct | 2007 |
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Key people
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Bey Logan Brian White |
| Products | DVDs |
| Website | www |
Hong Kong Legends was a United Kingdom DVD distribution company, based in Hertfordshire and operating from the UK and Australia between 1999 and 2007. Hong Kong Legends was initially part of Medusa Communications, who, along with Soulblade bought up the UK distribution rights for film titles previously owned by Eastern Heroes label.
Hong Kong Legends released 101 Hong Kong classic films, primarily martial arts films and other action films. In preparing the DVDs, they gained access to the vaults of Hong Kong studios such as Golden Harvest, selecting the films with the highest quality prints available. Hong Kong Legends added audio commentaries most notably by Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan, conducted interviews with key actors, directors and other film crew, performed new translations for subtitles and cleaned up damage to the films.
Their catalogue of films included releases featuring Hong Kong stars such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh.
In 2004, Contender Entertainment Group (the UK branch of Entertainment One) took over Medusa Communications, including both Hong Kong Legends, and their sister brand, Premier Asia.
Brian White, who had been the Brand Manager and prime mover of the label, left Contender. He was also a close personal friend of Bey Logan. Logan decided it was time to leave the company and moved to the US, to begin working in a similar capacity for The Weinstein Company's East Asian DVD distribution company Dragon Dynasty.
Shortly thereafter, Harvey Weinstein brought White on board at Dragon Dynasty as Vice President of Asian Brand Management and Post Production. With the loss of two of its biggest assets (Logan, for his popular commentaries; and White, who had been responsible for many of the exclusive extras), Hong Kong Legends had to cancel many of its planned releases. As no attempt was made to bring in replacement staff to perform audio commentaries, or to create bonus features, the release schedule dropped, ultimately spelling the demise of the company. Subsequent DVDs were released in so-called "Ultra Bit" versions, implying DVDs with improved bitrates or in otherwise "special editions". In fact, the releases were significantly more basic, the company having lost the rights for additional features other than trailers, and the bitrate was no higher than their previous releases.
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Wikipedia