Stoner

Stoner (1974)

鐵金剛大破紫陽觀

An Australian cop heads to Hong Kong to head off the supply of a new designer drug which raises the sexual appetite of anyone who takes it.

Date of release
1974-08-02
TMDB
5.5 / 10 (5)
Runtime
1h 47m
Genres
Action, Crime, Thriller
Director
Huang Feng

Casting

Interesting facts

The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss, also known as Stoner, A Man Called Stoner, and Hong Kong Hitman is a 1974 Hong Kong action film which was produced by Raymond Chow and directed by Huang Feng.

Production

Originally, The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss was to star not only Lee, but also Japanese film star Sonny Chiba as well. The film was to pit Lee against "The Western Adversary" played by James Bond star George Lazenby. Lazenby had been signed to a multi-picture deal by Lee and Chow during Game of Death and was to star in that film, as well as two subsequent films with Lee.

Warner Brothers was going to co-produce and distribute the film before Lee's sudden death and was going to give The Shrine of Ultimate Bliss a large worldwide release, a $10,000,000 production budget and a $10,000,000 worldwide marketing budget (which was astronomical at that time – as a comparison the 1974 James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun also a 1974 release had only a $7,000,000 production budget and a $6,000,000 worldwide marketing…

Enter the Dragon grossed more than $21,000,000 in the US just in 1973 alone and more than $4,000,000 in the US in 1974. Through 2006 the film has grossed more than $115,000,000 in the US alone. It grossed more than $65,000,000 overseas through 1973, and more than $90,000,000 overseas through 1974. Through 2006 it has grossed more than $150,000,000 overseas.

So considering that Way of the Dragon grossed more than $85,000,000 at the box office worldwide with just a $130,000 production budget/$1,000,000 marketing budget, and that Enter the Dragon grossed more than $265,000,000 at the box office worldwide with just an $850,000 production budget/$10,000,000 marketing budget, then it isn't too far-fetched to realize Warner Brother's $400 million gross prediction for Shrine with its $20,000,000 total cost…

George Lazenby had said that one of the main reasons that he quit the role of Bond was because he felt that he could gross more at the box office in other films. The Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun (1974), ended up grossing $97,600,000 worldwide, so if not for Lee's sudden death, Lazenby's quite bold and now rather infamous prediction may have come true.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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