[2015.04.29] SUNNY LUK AND LONGMAN LEUNG SPEND 200 MILLION ON HELIOS

Sunny Luk and Longman Leung does not make the big budget film HELIOS for awards

"Brothers" Nick Cheung and Jacky Cheung are both good actors, naturally they have spark when they work together

Janice Man has many action scenes
courtesy of mingpao.com

The dream team of Longman Leung Lok Man and Sunny Luk Kim Ching has been working separately in different film industry positions for over 20 years. In 2013 they joint directed their film film COLD WAR (HONG JIN) and immediately showed their brilliance as the film won 9 awards at the 32th Hong Kong Film Awards; a year later, they have already become Hong Kong Film Award winning directors when they teamed up again for the film HELIOS (CHET DOH) and continued to fight for Hong Kong film. This time the production was costlier than COLD WAR, spending HK$ 200 million on film stars from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. They said that they did not make such a plan in order to win another award. They only wanted the audience to see a Hollywood film that spoke Cantonese.

From COLD WAR TO HELIOS, seemingly since one was cold and the other hot they had nothing to do with each other, actually they were fraternal twins stories. Luk Kim Ching explained the reason. "Because last time when we did research for COLD WAR, we discovered that Hong Kong actually was a Far East intelligence center, but COLD WAR was a story about internal struggles in the police force so the idea was not too suitable. Then the boss wanted us to make another film and wanted us to come up with a story. We told him this idea. The boss said OK and we immediately began planning. It dragged on for so long completely because this time the research was more difficult than the last time." Leung Lok Man continued, "At first it was truly difficult because it was very hard to find retired intelligence agents from before the Hand Over to provide information, luckily we finally found someone who was willing to reveal the information. Actually some information was not too suitable for use, we only used the subject that was suitable for film production. Thus we didn't need any special filtering." Even the Cross Harbor Tunnel entrance billboard ad of "Is Hong Kong Safe?" was rejected, Leung Lok Man said, "Now the society is a little sensitive, actually it can relax a little. Ultimately creativity is creativity, film is film." Luk Kim Ching also said, "Actually the entire world knows that this is a billboard, they wouldn't mistake it for real. This time seemed to be a little conservative, we treated it like a promotion for us."

Praising Janice Man's Performance By Name

This time with actors from many nations, communication and work habits should be harder to break in. Yet the two directors felt little was hard to handle; because everyone had the common language of film. For example Ji Jin-Hee did not wait for them to explain how to perform but he already understood. Action scenes was a major part of the film, mainly Nick Cheung Ka Fai, Shawn Yue Man Lok and Janice Man Wing Shan performed them. The two directors in particular had nothing but praise for Janice Man, as they guaranteed that they would her performance would absolutely open people's eyes. Which actor's performance was the most surprising? They said without hesitation, "Of course it was Hok Yau! First it was truly very hard to ask him to return, we first had to tailor a character that had to be him. He also gave many great suggestions on the script, due to which we improved. Finally we spent half a year's time before he agreed to perform."

Want Hong Kong Film To Regain Chinese Film Box Office Champions

COLD WAR made them Hong Kong Film Award winning directors. Would they hope that HELIOS would bring them another victory? They said, "We leave awards to chance, last time we really didn't think about winning. Since we have already won, we instead want other people to win. We only hope that the Hong Kong Chinese film box office championship can be Hong Kong film's again. YOU ARE THE APPLE OF MY EYE has already hogged it for 3 years, we truly want to see who can regain the honor for Hong Kong. (Do you hope that the film can bring its actors awards?) Of course we want all of them to be nominated, but we want the most for Mr. Hok Yau to get a Best Actor nomination."

HELIOS seemed to have room for a sequel, of course it would not be so soon because the next stop that they are planning to make is the long awaited COLD WAR 2. Seemingly it will be another big film. Did the two directors only truly make big production films? Their answer was "No!"

Long For the Sci Fi Film Challenge

Did they have any subject that they would want to try? They said, "We too want to try to make a small film. Small films have their own way to be made, and the same goes for big films. The stress from each big production is larger. Actually we want to challenge a science fiction film the most, but the hardest is the setting. Technologically there are some problems that have to be resolved first, which we would rather wait for to keep from making something the the audience would frowned upon."