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It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World (富贵逼人)

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World (富贵逼人) is a 1987 Hong Kong comedy directed and written by Clifton Ko (高志森) and produced by D&B Films, in which a working-class family in a public housing estate wins the Mark Six lottery first prize and finds that sudden wealth brings more trouble than happiness.1 Released for the 1987 Lunar New Year season, it earned over HK$27 million and became D&B's biggest hit, spawning two sequels and a long-running status as a classic of Hong Kong New Year cinema.1 • 2

Key factDetail
Original title / year富贵逼人, 1987, Hong Kong, Cantonese, 96 minutes1
Director / writerClifton Ko Chi-sum; producer 谷薇丽 (Ellen Koo); cinematography 温文杰1
StudioD&B Films Co. (德宝)3
Lead castBill Tung (董驠) as Uncle Bill, Lydia Sum (沈殿霞) as his wife, with Chan Yik-shuk, Loletta Lee, Kwan Pui-ling, Eric Tsang, and David Chiang1 • 3
Box officeOver HK$27 million in the 1987 Lunar New Year period; one scholarly source gives HK$27,141,824, a Singapore newspaper gives HK$27.8 million, fourth among Hong Kong films that year1 • 2 • 4
SequelsIt's a Mad, Mad, Mad World II (富贵再逼人, 1988) and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World III (富贵再三逼人, 1989)5
Recent status4K restoration released in 2024; a Malaysia-set remake was announced for the 2027 Lunar New Year season6 • 4

Spoilers

Plot

Uncle Bill (雷达骠), played by Bill Tung, is a television news anchor supporting a family of five: his wife (Lydia Sum) and three daughters, all living in a public housing estate in Sha Tin.1 The household is short of money, and the wife, a typical housewife who plays mahjong with the neighbors, buys Mark Six lottery tickets constantly, hoping to strike it rich one day and show off to relatives and neighbors.3

The family does win the Mark Six first prize, but the windfall brings misfortune instead of happiness: the bank holding the money collapses, and news that they have become rich attracts criminals who kidnap the youngest daughter.7 Reduced to poverty again, the family must rescue their loved one, and the film closes on the realization that happiness must be earned by one's own hands.7 • 8

Production and D&B Films

D&B Films was founded in the mid-1980s by watch and fashion businessman Dickson Poon with John Shum and Sammo Hung, and by the mid-1980s stood alongside Golden Harvest and Cinema City as one of Hong Kong's three major studios.9 Clifton Ko, who had joined D&B in August 1985 as part of a three-man creative team with Fung Shih-yiu and Yuen Woo-ping's contemporary Yuen... his collaborator group, directed the film as a Lunar New Year comedy for the studio.10

The film was made without big-budget production values or an all-star cast, relying instead on everyday humor and plot.9 Ko has described one famous gag, in which the family throws an old refrigerator from their flat to avoid falling objects in the estate's open area, as an improvisation: the script called for a vase, but during shooting Ko saw a news report of someone throwing a television set from a height and had a prop refrigerator bought and thrown instead.11

Reception and box office

The film grossed over HK$27 million during the 1987 Lunar New Year period, making it D&B's biggest hit.1 The film scholar Yau Ching, professor of English at National Central University, records the gross as HK$27,141,824,2 while Lianhe Zaobao gives HK$27.8 million and places it fourth among Hong Kong films for the year.4 It out-grossed Cinema City's large-scale production The Legend of Wisely, released in the same holiday slot.12

Among D&B's 67 productions, the top two box-office films were both comedies: this film and its 1988 sequel, ahead of An Autumn's Tale (1987), which won three Hong Kong Film Awards including Best Film.9 Critics have attributed the series' popularity to its "never fading" quality, its mixture of laughter and tears, and its portrait of "typical ordinary Hong Kong people," winning through plot rather than star power.9 The South China Morning Post's retrospective called it a film that captures the Hong Kong psyche of the late 1980s, finding humor in the protagonists' materialism and transforming naked greed into an admirable family trait.13

The series and its sequels

Two sequels followed, one per year: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World II (富贵再逼人, 1988) and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World III (富贵再三逼人, 1989), both popular enough to establish a household-name New Year series.1 • 5 The third film, still at D&B but with a different director, saw box office drop sharply, and Ko's own 1992 follow-up It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World Too (富贵黄金屋) fared worse.5

The series is noted for engaging directly with the Hong Kong of its moment: public housing, lottery dreams, New Year visits, snobbery, and the emigration wave before 1997, with Uncle Bill lecturing that emigration is an irresponsible act.5 Yau Ching argues that, unlike Euro-American comedies built on "universal" situations, Hong Kong comedies of this kind are grounded in context-specific socio-political experience, and that comedy was the mainstream genre of 1980s Hong Kong consumption, topping the box office from 1977 to 1989 according to the film scholar Law Kar's statistics.2

Legacy

The film remains a fixture of Hong Kong New Year television reruns.4 In 2024 the China Film Archive, Douyin, and Volcano Engine completed a 4K restoration of 100 classic Hong Kong films under the Classic Hong Kong Film Restoration Project, with this film among the ten restored frame by frame and screened at the China Film Archive in December 2024.6 Restored 4K versions were also screened at Hong Kong universities in early 2024.14

A new Malaysia-set remake, 富贵逼人来, was announced with Clifton Ko again as director and writer, timed for the 2027 Lunar New Year season, the 40th anniversary of the original. Loretta Lee, who played the second daughter in 1987, returns as the lead in the role originated by Lydia Sum, with the story moved to Kuala Lumpur while keeping the overnight-riches premise.4 Ko has also adapted the material for the stage, with a planned run in the Greater Bay Area.11

References

  1. 富貴逼人, Hong Kong Film Archive
  2. Yau Ching, A Hong Kong Modern in the 1980s Trilogy: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World
  3. 富貴逼人, Apple TV (HK)
  4. 时隔40年拍新马版《富贵逼人来》, Lianhe Zaobao
  5. 從賀歲片發展看香港的高低起跌, HK01
  6. 抖音完成100部老港片4K高清修复, 快科技 via Chinaz
  7. 富贵逼人 (1987) plot, iQIYI
  8. 富貴逼人 線上看, MyVideo
  9. 游靜, 黃金時代香港的「富貴」與「逼人」, The Reporter book excerpt
  10. 香港影人小傳檢索：高志森, Hong Kong Film Archive
  11. 《富貴逼人》登舞台 灣區明年公演, Ta Kung Pao
  12. A Different Brilliance—The D & B Story, Hong Kong Film Archive
  13. Flashback: It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World (1987), South China Morning Post
  14. 4K修复版经典港片走进香港高校, Volcano Engine

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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