The notion of “pan‐Asian cinema” crystallized in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the downturn experienced by the film industries of Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Its inception thus coincides with a broader tendency towards “market‐led” regionalization in Northeast and Southeast Asia, which saw an increasingly “integrative market for culture,” even as the project of forging a unified “Asian” identity faltered. According to Darrell Davis and Emilie Yueh‐Yu Yeh, the term “pan‐Asian cinema” encompasses a range of film‐related practices: “talent‐sharing, cross‐border investment, co‐productions and market consolidation, through distribution and investment in foreign infrastructure”. Global Hollywood casts a long shadow over pan‐Asian cinema. The first commercial realization of the pan‐Asian model in the Hong Kong film industry was Applause Pictures, co‐founded in 2000 by a team of industry players: Peter Chan, Teddy Chen, and Allan Fung.