By | Published January 6, 2009

Celestial Pictures has announced the seal of an exclusive pay TV deal with Viasat Broadcasting UK Limited to broadcast Shaw Brothers kung fu and wuxia movies in 15 territories across Russia, the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and the Baltic States. This includes the Russian Federation, Georgia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Kazakhstan so even Borat will be able to watch licensed Shaw kung fu movies.

Genre classics such as COME DRINK WITH ME, THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN and BLOOD BROTHERS will be available on Viasat’s TV1000 Action East Channel, opening the door for Celestial’s Shaw Brothers films to a combined population of over 200 million.

The latest deal is a continuation of the successful partnership from the Viasat’s TV3 Slovenia deal featuring Shaw Brothers martial arts films screened on Pay TV in Central Europe. The deal also marks the first time these kung fu masterpieces will be available in Eurasia.

“The distribution in Eurasia is a landmark deal for Celestial’s Shaw Brothers martial arts movies,” said Terry Mak, Executive Vice President, Distribution and TV Networks of Celestial Pictures. “Kung fu has always been a popular genre amongst global audiences, and we are delighted to premiere these masterpieces in Russia, the CIS, and the Baltic States.”

While Celestial clearly continues to find new world markets for its Shaw Brothers film library which consists of 760 films, this success is tempered by setbacks by licensees in getting these films to the public here in the U.S. This includes the closing of Cablevision’s Kung Fu HD channel, the closing of Navarre’s BCI Eclipse home video unit and the scaling back of Shaw releases by The Weinstein Company’s Dragon Dynasty home video label.

Although Dragon Dynasty’s sales have been generally good, a source close to TWC cites poor sales of its classic kung fu and wuxia releases as reason for a halt in its planned release of 50 Shaw classics, as well as martial arts classics from Fortune Star’s Golden Harvest library.

The problem that U.S. distributors of Shaw classics have is the lack of name recognition among the films’ leading cast members. Anything with Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Tony Jaa on the cover sells well but such is not the case for movies starring Chen Kuan-tai, Ti Lung or Lo Lieh, all once superstars of Hong Kong cinema but largely unknown to general audiences here.

With the economy in shambles and home video sales in steady decline for the past two years, it’s unlikely we’ll see many more licensed Shaw classics released in the U.S. That leaves three possibilities for collectors still yearning for more, either buy licensed, gray market import releases from other territories, trade amongst each other or buy unlicensed and usually inferior bootleg releases from a handful of shady kung fu movie purveyors still in operation. For longtime fans of Shaw Brothers movies who have waited nearly two decades to see their favorite films officially reissued, it’s a frustrating but familiar situation.

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  • quincy

    this is a joke that there isn’t a channel either with direct tv time warner comcast or whoever else is a cable dish comapny that is a 24 hour martial arts/asain movie channel I don’t mins subtitled films if the movie is great i don’t mind. if there is an english version that’s all the better so i guess i will continue having to scoure the internet trying to find these movies can anyone tell me good websites to goto to find these thanks

  • Jun

    There can’t be more Shaw fans in Russia than there are in US. The reason why these classics are shown in Russia but not in US is the US distributor (namely the Weinsteins) is much greedier and would not release the films if they cannot make a certain margin of profit. It’s that simple.

  • http://www.myspace.com/eldominicanito3000 Manny Troncoso

    This suck balls man, I’m a huge fan of the Shaw Bros. you can watch a bunch of old Kun-fu movies here, http://www.tvunetworks.com, a few times they’ll have SB tiltles most of them with subtiltles, there are channels of martial arts:
    Black Belt TV
    Nostalgia Martial Arts
    PDTV-Kung Fu/Martial Arts
    There are a bunch of Chinesse channel as well, have fun.

  • Killer Meteor

    “There can’t be more Shaw fans in Russia than there are in US. The reason why these classics are shown in Russia but not in US is the US distributor (namely the Weinsteins) is much greedier and would not release the films if they cannot make a certain margin of profit. It’s that simple”

    Actually, blame can also rest with Celestial holding out too long on trying to sell ALL the Shaws, rather than the ones US buyers were interested in.

  • Albert Valentin

    This is truly terrible, especially for the film industry. As Mark pointed out, names like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Tony Jaa do sell. However, it is a shame that the distributors couldn’t use something of a selling point for the Shaw Brothers stars. It’s even sadder that Chan got his start in the classics and Li came from the near end of the era. I just don’t get why people can’t appreciate the authenticity of the classics as much as they do the modern action films today.

  • Junior

    Maybe if Dragon Dynasty charged a little less for thier releases, they’d do better, SB titles or not…
    I like the releases, don’t get me wrong, but paying $10.00 a title vs. paying $13.00 to $15.00 can sure make the difference. Just my two cents.

  • Killer Meteor

    its hard for a lot of cult distributors is getting them onto store shelves, never mind selling enough

  • 107

    When they did 2 packs for wm – they flew off the shelves….

  • slave

    they should do what Fox did with some of their Fortune Star releases. I’ve been screaming vehemently about this idiocy for months if not years. just say no to extras.

  • Killer Meteor

    And Fox stopped doing Fortune Star titles years ago, extras or no extras

  • Ab

    I think DD generally handled their releases poorly. Movies like My Young Auntie and Last Hurrah are for die hards but can have a wider range of appeal. Should have started with Jackie and Jaa releases and just loaded them with future Shaw release ads. We might have complained at the time that everytime we put the disc in a 36 Chambers commercial came up but it woulda been better.

    What do I know though? I just want legit copies that I don’t have to order from China.

  • Killer Meteor

    Well, there are plenty of legit stuff in Hong Kong if that’s what’s bothering you…

    I don’t care where it comes from provided it is legit and decent

  • slave

    i hate american dvd market. they can all die a malevolent death as far as i’m concerned

  • Killer Meteor

    Oh grow up!

  • slave

    oh stop it silly-billy

  • Ab

    Killer Meteor, I’m the same way, I only buy legit. I guess it’s a convenience issue. I’ve had headaches ordering before but I’ll keep ordering from HK if I have to. It’d just be nice if I can walk into a Best Buy and pick up a Five Venoms DVD.

  • Killer Meteor

    Well I’m from the UK, so buying overseas is habitual for me: we just don’t get the quantity of cult releases here

  • Mark

    taiseng released 3 channels on DirecTV and they also have their own IPTV platform called GekTV,losts of Kungfu action stuffs.