TVB’s contracted artists not allowed to perform at award ceremony

The 29th annual "Hong Kong Film Awards" will be held at the HK Cultural Center on April 18th – the ceremony itself will be broadcast simultaneously by ATV, Now TV, and RTHK. Yesterday, HK Film Award Association Chairman Gordon Chan, along with Vice-Chairman Eric Tsang, Josie Ho, last year’s Best Actor Nick Cheung and Best Actress Paw Hee-Ching, held a press conference to announce the nominees for this year’s awards.

Gordon Chan admitted that he is not worried about ATV doing to the ceremony what TVB did last year (editing of the show to the point of oblivion) because ATV’s biggest promise in bidding for the show this year is to broadcast the show in its entirety with as few edits as possible. He revealed that for this year’s award show, the association was able to obtain enough financial backing to cover the production costs – in addition to the HKD 5.8 million contributed by the HK Film Development Fund, the royalties from ATV and Now TV are practically double the amount that TVB used to pay. He also revealed that this year, it was actually the HK government that asked for the open bidding [for broadcast rights] to take place because it is more fair – the broadcast rights will be in effect for 2 years.

When asked if artists from the Big 4 record companies will be invited to perform at the award ceremony, Chan responded: “Haven’t decided yet. Basically, if the artists are contracted with TVB, even if they are singing the theme song for any of the nominated films, they will not be able to perform at the ceremony.” Eric Tsang was asked if he is allowed to appear on ATV (due to his relationship with TVB). He responded playfully: “Using status of ‘film artist’ should be okay, however since I should respect the ‘big boss’ (TVB), I will go check with them first.”

At the event, Nick and Josie were asked who their favorites are to win Best Actor and Best Actress this year. Nick said: “On a purely personal level (not applying any professional rationale), I would like Sean Lau to win Best Actor, Sandra Ng to win Best Actress, and Nicholas Tse to win Best Supporting Actor. However, on the other hand, I would be willing to bet that [veteran actor] Fung Sui Fan will probably win Supporting Actor.” Josie indicated that she also hopes Nicholas will win Supporting Actor – in terms of Best Actress, she feels that mainland actress Vicky Zhao (nominated for "Mulan") will probably win. For Best Actor, Josie is rooting for Sean Lau: “Sean has been nominated so many times, only winning once is not enough. In my opinion, however many times [fellow actor] Anthony Wong won, Sean should win the some number as well.”

Source: MingpaoTranslation: llwy12 @ AsianFanatics