Why movie star Louis Koo feels the need to take Hong Kong film industry in ‘new directions’ to secure its future

“It’s a way to let audiences know how hard they work. Think of their schedule – they work for six to seven days a week, and sometimes they don’t even get time to eat. They are also under serious pressure all the time from the work that they do.”

Koo says he found time in his own busy schedule to research his role. “I was making other films at the time, but I still managed to take some emergency medical training to prepare for the role. That experience inspired me, and I wanted to make sure the ambulancemen looked good in the film.”

Although Koo was in the United States to publicise Vital Sign and the action film The White Storm 3: Heaven or Hell, which had its North American premiere at the NYAFF, his main mission was to promote the Hong Kong film industry abroad, he says.

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Koo’s film studio One Cool Group, which he founded in 2013, aims for innovation, and he says he is continually looking for new ways to ensure the future of Hong Kong cinema. Foreign trips allow him to make new contacts and encounter new ways of doing things.

“We in the Hong Kong film industry need to be proactive about what we are doing. We need to find new directions to lead the industry forward into the future,” he says. “There are too few genres in the local industry at the moment, and we need to develop more.”

One Cool Group, he says, is doing just that. Koo is anxious to point out that his company is more than just a production entity – it’s a full-scale studio which handles training, post-production, computer graphics, artist management and even equipment rental.

He hopes to use his creative and financial muscle to bring new ideas to Hong Kong cinema and put the industry on a sure footing for when his generation “passes the baton” to the next generation of filmmakers, he says.

Animation is one such underdeveloped genre, he says. Hong Kong has never developed an animation industry, despite the big-screen success of the iconic pig McDull – created by Hong Kong cartoonist Alice Mak Ka-pik – back in 2001.

Not only is animation production too slow a process for Hong Kong’s quick-fire industry, its neighbour Japan is, along with the United States, the world leader in the genre. Most animated films that show in Hong Kong are simply imported from Japan.

But Koo says Hong Kong can compete. “Animation is something that we haven’t really done here. The Japanese are specialists in that, but there’s no reason that we can’t do it too,” he says, noting that he worked as executive producer on two Hollywood animated productions in 2021: Sony Pictures Animation’s The Mitchells vs the Machines and Columbia Pictures’ Vivo.

Koo wants to find international collaborators for such films. “I am looking to make global projects, not just Hong Kong ones,” he says.

His recent invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the prestigious US-based film organisation behind the Oscars, should help, he says.

“As a member of the Academy, I want to work hard to develop new genres from a global perspective. I want to create new directions in film.”

So, are his efforts to innovate bearing fruit in Hong Kong? Koo cites Warriors of Future, his long-in-the-making CGI science fiction epic, as an example of what he means. The idea for the film was to showcase Hong Kong’s abilities in the CGI field, and it succeeded in that, even if the story itself was simplistic.

Koo says Warriors of Future is one of the most interesting movies he has worked on in his 130-plus film career. “It was something that the Hong Kong film industry had never tried before; no one had done science fiction with that level of special effects.

“You can imagine how difficult the entire process of making that film was. There were so many problems that needed to be overcome, and I was faced with new challenges at almost every moment,” he says.

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But it was all in a day’s work for the intrepid star. “I didn’t mind that. Encountering new problems is actually something that I find very useful. I want to face new challenges and learn from them,” he says.

At 52, Koo is now one of the most powerful players – perhaps the most powerful – in the Hong Kong film industry. It has been a slow and steady climb for the actor and producer, who took nearly 20 years to reach superstar status.

Koo joined Hong Kong broadcasting company TVB in 1993, and appeared in his first TV series, Knot to Treasure, that year. He shone in the horror-comedy film series Troublesome Night that began in 1997. By 1999, the Post was describing him as a “bright up-and-coming-star on the entertainment scene”.

Koo appeared in a phenomenal number of films during the late 1990s and early 2000s – his lengthy résumé is a reminder of those of the hardworking stars from the golden age of Hong Kong cinema in the 1960s and 1970s – and he worked with directors such as Derek Yee Tung-sing, Wilson Yip Wai-shun and Johnnie To Kei-fung.The actor appeared in films of all genres, and didn’t hesitate to take cameo roles or work with relatively unknown filmmakers. His hard work paid off, and by the 2010s he had become a major star. Koo was named best actor at the 2018 Hong Kong Film Awards for his part in Paradox.He has a special memory of To, who, he says “really knows how to tell a story, how to structure a narrative”. Koo has appeared in a number of critically acclaimed films for To, including Throw Down, Election and Election 2, and Drug War.

“One Cool was actually born after a conversation with Johnnie,” Koo says. “Johnnie never used CGI, and I mentioned that to him a few times. In the end he said, ‘Louis Koo, why don’t you just go and do a sci-fi film with CGI yourself?’”

Koo took the comment to heart. “I think that it opened up a new vision of the future for me,” he says. “If you are only making films the conventional way, worrying about the production schedules, budget, and all that, you are never going to start thinking about the future, about how different things could be.”

Although he’s now a studio boss, Koo doesn’t ignore the fundamentals – he still acts as much as he can. Everyday things are important to an actor, he says.

“Acting is about living. It’s about realising that every day you learn something, and experience something new. You use your experiences to make yourself a better performer,” he says.

It’s not a stretch to play so many different types of character, or switch between genres, he adds. “Every person consists of multiple facets. It’s all a matter of balance. You amplify certain facets and you minimise other facets for each role.”

Off screen, Koo has received plaudits for his charity work, the details of which he has tended to keep to himself. In the past, he funded the construction of numerous schools in China. More recently, during the Covid-19 pandemic, he ensured that members of the film industry were provided for.

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Koo modestly dismisses any praise for that. “I was – and am – the president of the Hong Kong Performing Arts Guild, and the president of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers. So I was simply fulfilling my responsibilities,” he says.

“It was all about helping the people who work behind the scenes in the Hong Kong film industry. We worked hard to make sure that they would survive. If we hadn’t done that, people would have left the industry and done something else. Many of them would never have returned to film.

“We wanted to help them, and we wanted to keep them in the industry, too.”

Having accepted the Extraordinary Star Asia Award at the NYAFF, Koo says he will continue to promote and praise the industry that put him where he is today.

“I’m honoured to get the award, but I really represent the whole of the Hong Kong film industry. The industry gave so much to me, so whatever my company does, it’s about giving back to that community,” he says.

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