Distribution Workshop Relaunching Juno Mak’s ‘Sons of the Neon Night’

Asian sales and production firm Distribution Workshop is using the Busan International Film Festival’s market to re-launch ambitious “Sons of the Neon Night,” a film it first became attached to in 2015. Only this time the Juno Mak-directed project is now in post-production, has a stellar cast and has expanded to become the highest-budget movie ever hatched in Hong Kong.

“Sons of the Neon Night” is pitched as a high-octane yet highly-stylized, police-crime-action-thriller set in a deconstructed and reimagined Hong Kong. It boasts an A-list cast headed by Takeshi Kaneshiro (“House of Flying Daggers”), Tony Leung Ka-fai (“Cold War”), Sean Lau Ching-wan (“Life Without Principle”), Louis Koo (“Warriors of Future”) and Ritchie Jen (“Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In”).

It also features a score composed by the late Sakamoto Ryuichi (“The Last Emperor”).

With a production budget of over $50 million, the movie is currently in post-production and targeted for release no later than the first half of 2025.

Mak is a leading contemporary artist and singer based in Hong Kong. He achieved recognition as a filmmaker too, with his 2013 debut ‘Rigor Mortis,” which premiered at the Venice film festival. “Sons of the Neon Night” was announced soon thereafter, but did not go forward.

The story begins with a gigantic explosion and Michael-Mann-style gun shooting of an unprecedented scale in a snow-struck Causeway Bay, a downtown district on Hong Kong Island. Upon investigation, it was a diversion that was a prelude to a series of wild actions planned by the heir to a global pharmaceutical conglomerate (portrayed by Kaneshiro), which ends up with his own father, the founder of the family conglomerate and possible drug baron, killed in hospital. A mission to declare a war on drugs is declared but has the result of throwing the world – and the underworld – into chaos.

Distribution Workshop is also representing two Taiwan romance drama films: “Penguin Girl,” directed by emerging director Yang Yuyu, and “Unexpected Courage,” inspired by the true story of director Shawn Yu and starring acclaimed singer-actress René Liu and Hsueh Shih-Ling, a best supporting actor award winner at Busan’s Asia Contents Awards. For “Unexpected Courage,” Distribution Workshop will manage sales in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan only.