General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Movie Emperor

The Movie Emperor (红毯先生; formerly titled Red Carpet, 全民明星) is a 2024 Chinese comedy-drama directed by Ning Hao and starring Andy Lau as Lau Wai-chi, a veteran Hong Kong movie star who takes an against-type role as a farmer in a low-budget indie drama in pursuit of a long-elusive acting award¹^•². The film premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival and closed the 28th Busan International Film Festival before its Chinese theatrical release on February 10, 2024³^•⁴.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	红毯先生 (Hong tan xian sheng); formerly Red Carpet (全民明星)²^•⁴
Director / star	Ning Hao, with Andy Lau as Lau Wai-chi; Ning also appears as the director character Lin Hao¹^•⁵
Screenwriters	Liu Xiaodan, Wang Ang, and Daniel Yu⁶
Genre / language	Comedy-drama in Mandarin (Cantonese also listed for some releases)⁶^•⁷
Runtime	125 minutes in most listings; the Hong Kong release ran 128 minutes and the Australian classification lists 127⁸^•⁹
Festival premieres	Toronto International Film Festival Gala Presentations, September 14, 2023; closing film of the 28th Busan International Film Festival, October 13, 2023³^•⁴
Theatrical release	China February 10, 2024; Hong Kong February 29, 2024⁴
Worldwide box office	$13,100,097, of which $13,041,286 came from China⁸

Spoilers

Plot

Lau Wai-chi has worked in the film industry for forty years and remains famous, but he keeps missing out on the Hong Kong Film Awards. Making short tribute videos to his past characters feels desperate, so he decides he needs to make a film again. He contacts the Chinese director Lin Hao, played by Ning Hao himself, to star in a film shot in the countryside as an ordinary farmer, something he has never done¹⁰.

The role requires him to learn from villagers how they really live and speak, but he is so used to star treatment that he cannot connect with people of lower social status, and the villagers and crew see through his arrogance and vanity¹⁰. To research the part he goes deep into the countryside, personally solicits investment, and refuses a stunt double, which triggers a series of escalating misadventures¹. A careless horse stunt sets off a social-media firestorm, and the out-of-touch celebrity is canceled over the course of several misadventures¹¹^•⁵.

Production

A reunion seventeen years in the making. The film marks the first collaboration between Ning Hao and Andy Lau since Ning's 2006 sleeper hit Crazy Stone, which Lau's pan-Asian project Focus First Cuts produced to champion new talent; Lau had helped fund Ning early in his career³^•¹². Ning conceived the story early in the pandemic with Lau in mind: a movie star who takes an against-type role to bait film festivals. "I picked an angle that Andy is most familiar with. He is, after all, a superstar," Ning said³.

Shooting began only in March 2022 because of the pandemic and Lau's schedule. When Covid surged in Shenzhen, the key location, production moved to Guangzhou, Sanwei, and Hainan Island, and the crew "filmed and improvised as we moved from place to place," a guerrilla style Ning compared to his early shoestring films³.

Huanxi Media was the exclusive investor, and the film was released in the first quarter of 2024². Lau also served as executive producer through Infinitus Entertainment alongside Dong Ping of Huanxi Media, with CMC Pictures handling international sales³. The production company was Dirty Monkey Film Production Co.⁶

Satire and reception

The film is a satire of the pretensions of the film industry, the cult of celebrity, cancel culture, and narrative-making, and both Lau and Ning lampoon themselves; Ning also stars as the director⁵^•¹¹. The character's name is a play on the real Chinese names of Tony Leung, Stephen Chow, and Lau himself, and the script is densely packed with references to Lau's career and to Hong Kong and mainland Chinese celebrity culture¹³^•¹⁴.

Critics responded well. On Rotten Tomatoes the film held a 100% Tomatometer from seven reviews, with an audience score of 60%¹⁵. Peter Debruge of Variety called it "one of the year's savvier satires," and James Marsh of the South China Morning Post gave it 4/5, writing that it "devours the low-hanging fruit of celebrity culture with commendable gusto"¹⁵. The Screen International review found the comedy persuasive beyond its China-specific in-jokes, though it noted the storyline turns into "a series of incremental displays of a vain man's hubris before the inevitable fall"¹⁴.

Release and box office

After the festival run, the film opened wide in China on February 10, 2024, the first day of the Chinese New Year holiday period, with limited releases in Australia and New Zealand from February 8⁴^•⁸. Reported box office totaled $13,100,097 worldwide, with China accounting for $13,041,286, Australia $44,748, and New Zealand $14,063⁸. In Hong Kong, where it opened on February 29, 2024 and ran 53 days, it earned HK$645,992 from 11,709 admissions⁹. The film later became available on the streaming platform huanxi.com¹⁶.

References

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