From A Better Tomorrow to Bullet in the Head, the 10 best Golden Princess films ranked

A library of Hong Kong films, including the likes of A Chinese Ghost Story and Hard Boiled, has been bought – good news for fans overseas

Reading Time:4 minutes

Chow Yun-fat in a still from A Better Tomorrow (1986), one of the classic Hong Kong films in the Golden Princess library recently bought by Shout! Studios, which plans to make them available to fans around the world. Photo: ISD Photo

Published: 4:15am, 22 Jan 2025Updated: 8:32am, 22 Jan 2025

Overseas fans of classic Hong Kong films had some good news recently: Shout! Studios bought worldwide rights, excluding some Asian territories, to the Golden Princess library and plans to start making the films available abroad.

The library of 156 films actually comprises both the Cinema City library and the Golden Princess Productions library, and features films made by Tsui Hark’s Film Workshop.

Cinema City was formed in 1979 by comedians Dean Shek Tin, Karl Maka and Raymond Wong Pak-ming; Tsui Hark later joined the outfit. In the 1980s, it soon became the second most powerful production house in the then-colony, just behind Golden Harvest.

Golden Princess was a distribution and exhibition company which funded Cinema City to supply its cinemas with films. Golden Princess began producing select films itself at the end of the 1980s, when Cinema City was winding down.

Below we look at the 10 best titles of Golden Princess and Cinema City.

10. Aces Go Places series (1982-1989)

The popularity of the Aces Go Places films was the foundation of Cinema City’s success. Laughs and action were the mainstay of the incredibly popular spy series, which mixed screwball comedy with dangerous stunts in five films from 1982 to 1989.