“A young kid loses his father through a space portal. His father got onto a planet of giants through the portal. His son finds a way to rescue his father, and on that planet there is a Hamlet story.”
If this plot for an animated movie sounds outlandish even for science fiction, the would-be movie mogul who is heavily involved in the production of Thru the Moebius Strip is even more improbable: Anthony Neoh, the 57-year-old regulator who has overseen both Hong Kong’s and mainland China’s stock markets.
Head of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission from 1995 to 1998, Neoh was asked by former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji five years ago to become a senior adviser to Beijing’s China Securities Regulatory Commission -- a position he still holds. But because the advisory job is part-time, the Hong Kongtrained lawyer had the freedom to team up with his brother Raymond, a computer graphics specialist with 20 years of experience in the U.S., to found Shenzhen-based Global Digital Creations in 1999.
Now GDC is rushing to finish its outer-space Hamlet for the Cannes Film Festival in May. The movie, which took two years and $15 million to complete, is thought to be the first full-length computer-animated feature ever made outside the U.S. It is based on an idea of French designer and comic illustrator Jean (Moebius) Giraud, who has worked on such sci-fi hits as Tron, The Abyss, Alien and The Fifth Element.
Neoh is dead serious about building a film business. Production costs in China for a computer-generated film like Moebius, he points out, are about one tenth what they are in Hollywood. “We’re taking them on frontally,” says Neoh of his U.S. rivals. “This is the first shot across the bow.”
He hasn’t forsaken his capital markets roots, however. In July, Neoh took GDC public in Hong Kong, raising about $7 million. The shares have lost roughly 50 percent of their value since then. Of course, regulators can appreciate the vagaries of markets.
