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Shaw Brothers

Shaw Brothers (HK) Ltd.
Public company
Industry Film production
Founded 27 December 1958 (1958-12-27)
Defunct 28 November 2011 (2011-11-28)
Headquarters Hong Kong (main; English-speaking)
Macau (main; Portuguese-speaking)
Kuching, Sarawak (Malaysian)
Products Films
Website www.shawbrothers.com.hk
Shaw Brothers Studio
Shawstudios.jpg
Shaw Studios, Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong
Chinese 邵氏片場

Shaw Brothers (HK) Ltd. (Chinese: 邵氏兄弟(香港)公司) was the largest film production company of Hong Kong.

In 1925, three Shaw brothers—Runje, Runme, and Runde—founded Tianyi Film Company (also called Unique) in Shanghai, and established a film distribution base in Singapore, where Runme and the youngest brother, Run Run Shaw, managed the precursor to the parent company, Shaw Organisation. Runme and Run Run took over the film production business of its Hong Kong-based sister company, Shaw & Sons Ltd., and in 1958, a new company, "Shaw Brothers," was set up. In the 1960s, Shaw Brothers established what was once the largest privately owned studio in the world, Movietown.

Over the years the film company produced some 1,000 films, some of them being the most popular and significant Chinese-language films of the period. It also popularized the kung-fu genre of films. In 1987, the company suspended film production in order to concentrate on the television industry through its subsidiary TVB. Film production resumed in limited capacity in 2009.

In 2011 Shaw Brothers was reorganized into the Clear Water Bay Land Company Limited, its film production business being taken over by other companies within the Shaw conglomerate.

Prior to their involvement in the filmmaking business, the Shaw brothers were interested in opera and owned a theatre in Shanghai, and their father also owned a cinema. One of the plays in their theatre, The Man from Shensi, was very popular. The Shaw brothers then bought their first camera, and Runje Shaw made this play into a silent film which turned out to be a success. Runje Shaw and his brothers Runde and Runme formed a film production company in 1924 in Shanghai called the Tianyi Film Company (also known as Unique). The company's earliest films, New Leaf (立地成佛) and Heroine Li Feifei (女侠李飛飛), were shown in Shanghai in 1925.


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