In the 1990s, with underdeveloped cinemas in China, many people watched ‘A Chinese Odyssey’ and ‘Shaolin Soccer’ via video rooms and pirated discs. Later, to make up for their youthful regrets, they spontaneously began saying, “I owe Sing Yeh a movie ticket.” When ‘The Mermaid’ was released in 2016, Chinese netizens fueled its box office with this slogan, helping it sell nearly 3.4 billion RMB (about RM2 billion), but Chow and the production team never used this as a marketing tactic. In 2017, when Chow and director Tsui Hark promoted ‘Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back,’ Chow responded to this saying, “Actually, no one has ever owed me any movie ticket, but when you see so many people supporting you, you often feel instead that you owe the audience a lot. It just makes me want to do even better to repay them.”
In addition, on the 11th, Chow led cast members Dilraba Dilmurat, Lay Zhang, and others to a promotional event. He spoke his mind to all the audience, mentioning, “I’m most afraid of letting everyone down,” and candidly admitted his anxiety about not doing well enough and thus disappointing fans and all the staff. His heartfelt words moved the whole room.
News source: Apple Daily News