Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefNi Kuang, one of Hong Kong’s most distinguished screenwriters and novelists, has died. He was 87.He died on Sunday in Hong Kong, with local media reporting skin cancer as the cause of death.Ni wrote some 300 screenplays, many in the martial arts genre and many for the Shaw Brothers studio with co-writer Chang Chen.
He wrote the scripts for classic films “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin” and “One Armed Swordsman” and had a hand in two of Bruce Lee’s six movies “The Big Boss” and “Fist of Fury” though the writing credit went to Wei Lo.As a novelist, Ni wrote the “New Adventures of Wesley” a series of detective stories that often featured aliens and extra-terrestrial creatures.
These were initially serialized in the Ming Pao newspaper from the 1960s and spawned numerous films and TV series (some written as ‘Wisely’). “For those who are a bit old, they all know that the three greatest talents in the literary world are Jin Yong, (popularly known as Louis Cha), Gu Long and Ni Kuang.
After that, no such iconic and epoch-making people have appeared,” said Tenky Tin, spokesman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, in quotes supplied to the South China Morning Post. “I am wondering if this is the end of an era.” Gu died in 1985.
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