Hong Kong cinema has a long history of adapting Japanese manga, but few films had the budget and pedigree of Initial D, based off the most popular car-racing manga at the turn of the twenty-first century. Fresh off the success of the era-defining Infernal Affairs, directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak teamed up with screenwriter Felix Chong for this idol vehicle starring Jay Chou, Edison Chen, and Shawn Yue. It was a smashing success in the summer of 2005, with fans loving the dizzying street races and all that comes with it. But aside from the comic relief of Anthony Wong and Chapman To, Initial D is a surprisingly hilarious film that could only have been made by Hong Kong filmmakers. For starters, we have Japanese characters speaking colloquial Cantonese; Jay Chou, whose mother tongue is Mandarin, tries with all his might to say his Cantonese lines. Then there are Shawn Yue and Edison Chen, who take their roles as seriously as they did with Infernal Affairs II. Despite (or thanks to) their total disregard for common sense and the Japanese source material, the filmmakers transported Hong Kong-style comedy and Mong Kok culture to the mountain passes of Japan.

Andrew Lau (b. 1960, Hong Kong) is a prolific director, producer, and cinematographer. He received his training as a cinematographer in Shaw Brothers Studio in his early 20s and amazed his peers with his visually astonishing night scenes and handheld shots in City on Fire (1987) and As Tears Go By (1988). Lau stepped up to the director’s chair and helmed Against All in 1990. He reached another peak in his career in 1995 when he co-founded BoB & Partners with Wong Jing and Manfred Wong and kickstarted the successful Young and Dangerous (1996) franchise. After the computer graphics-heavy box office hits The Storm Riders (1998) and A Man Called Hero (1999), Lau started up his own production company Basic Pictures with the hugely successful Infernal Affairs in 2002. He has turned to co-productions with Chinese Mainland as director and producer since 2009, after a brief stint shooting the Korean film Daisy (2006) in the Netherlands and The Flock (2007) in Hollywood.

Alan Mak (b. 1965, Hong Kong) is a director, scriptwriter, and producer. Upon graduation from the School of Drama in the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 1990, he worked as an assistant director before making his directorial debut Nude Fear (1998). He met Andrew Lau as cinematographer in the shooting of Wicked City (1992). The directing duo continued with two more hits Initial D and Confession of Pain (2006) after the Infernal Affairs trilogy. Similarly, Mak continued to share writing and directing credits with Felix Chong after the trilogy and their most successful collaborations are Overheard (2009), Overheard 2 (2011), and Overheard 3 (2014).