Louis Koo is talking about who gets to make Hong Kong’s next films
Style’s November cover with Louis Koo returns to younger talent and human creativity. The receipts sit at One Cool Group, Keep Rolling, and the first features his slate has already put into theaters.
The Goldscene Desk
Louis Koo is Style by SCMP’s November cover, and the November 6 interview is not another career reel. It finds him talking about who gets to make Hong Kong’s next films, how a new generation enters the work, and why he still treats human creativity as the part machines cannot replace. Through a translator he still stakes action as the city’s classic strength, “whether they’re period pieces or modern-day dramas.” Then he moves off himself to the craft’s future.
The production work behind that talk is One Cool Group, which Koo founded in 2013 as a quiet open secret before going public as its boss. The company now covers the whole chain in Hong Kong: financing, production, VFX, post, distribution, equipment, and artist management, with more than 300 staff and offices beyond the city. The big titles get the attention. Koo executive produced Warriors of Future, Ng Yuen-fai’s effects-heavy sci-fi that took years and a reported $56 million to finish. He also stars in Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, the Soi Cheang Walled City film that cleared more than HK$100 million at home.
The quieter bet is who gets a first feature. One Cool has put money into smaller Hong Kong and regional stories that do not look like the crime and action brand the city exports. Luk Yee Sum’s The Secret Diary of a Mom to Be follows a career woman blindsided by pregnancy. Emily Chan’s Macau-set Madalena tracks a taxi driver and a bar hostess. Jimmy Wan’s Zero to Hero, produced with Sandra Ng, tells Paralympian So Wa Wai’s story and became Hong Kong’s Oscar international-feature submission. Koo has said the point is writing and directing talent that can speak to younger local audiences who want more than the thrillers the industry is known for abroad.
That pipeline is not only a studio slate. As chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, Koo has kept the Keep Rolling Keep Running fund alive after the pandemic: Federation money into selected scripts, jobs for crews, and room for first-time directors such as Mandrew Kwan (The Remnant). A later round aimed at four projects with investment capped around HK$4.2 million each. At City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media, his name sits on the One Cool Awards for Outstanding Script, film-studies scholarships, and the Louis Koo Creative Media Awards that still named 2025/26 student winners.
Human creativity is the other half of the Style cover. At the New York Asian Film Festival, accepting Screen International’s Extraordinary Star Asia honor, Koo told the room that AI can take over efficiency but “will never be able to surpass humans and human emotions,” and that expression is what reaches an audience. The November interview returns to that point. One Cool’s own shops already experiment with CGI and AI techniques, including animated Warriors work. The tools can stay on set. Someone still has to invent the film worth making, and that someone should not only be the same short list of veterans.
GQ’s Local Heroes profile of One Cool put his day-to-day priority in plainer words: “I just want to make sure everyone has work.” The Style cover is the public version of that priority. The proof is already in theaters and on festival calendars under other people’s names.
