How ‘middle class’ Hong Kong movie studio D&B Films became one of the most respected

D&B films, started by watch retailer Dickson Poon, launched Michelle Yeoh’s action-movie career and was known for its ‘middle class values’

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Cynthia Rothrock (left) and Michelle Yeoh in a still from Yes, Madam! (1985), made by D&B Films, a studio founded by watch retailer Dickson Poon, who would go on to marry Yeoh. Photo: Handout

Published: 11:15am, 1 Dec 2024

By the mid-1980s, Hong Kong’s once-powerful Shaw Brothers studio had stopped producing films, and the city’s film industry was dominated by Shaw’s former rival Golden Harvest and the newer, comedy-oriented studio Cinema City.

Into this melee stepped an unexpected competitor: D&B Films, owned by Dickson Poon, a wealthy watch retailer with no experience of the film industry.

With the help of martial arts star Sammo Hung Kam-bo and John Sham Kin-fun, a celebrity, radio personality and bit-part actor with some film production experience, D&B Films quickly established itself as a force to be reckoned with after launching in 1984.

It made commercial hits such as Yes, Madam!, which launched the action-movie careers of both Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock, and also produced a line of more auteur-like films – referred to internally as “C pictures” – such as Leong Po-chih’s dramatic wartime tale Hong Kong 1941 and Derek Yee Tung-sing’s comic take on mental illness, The Lunatics.

Paul Chun (centre) in a still from The Lunatics (1986). Photo: Handout

Quickly frustrated by the low number of cinema screens he could show his films on under an arrangement with Golden Harvest, which ran a chain of cinemas as well as a production company, Poon courageously assembled the Dickson cinema chain to screen the D&B productions.