Daniel Lee Yan-kong, born in Hong Kong on 27 April 1960 and raised in Diamond Hill, is a film director, screenwriter and art director. He studied Chinese painting and calligraphy from the age of ten under the painter Fan Zideng, trained in judo and placed third in an inter-school contest in his second year of secondary school. After going to Canada in 1979, he graduated from the University of Windsor in 1984 with a major in mass communication and a minor in visual art, and returned to Hong Kong the same year to join Asia Television as an assistant director, quickly rising to direct his first series, Charm of Kowloon Tong, starring Moon Lee. He left Asia Television in 1986 to assist Ann Hui on a martial-arts epic and worked as an art director on other films, then joined Television Broadcasts in 1992 and made his name with martial-arts serials; in 1993 he won a gold award for television production at the New York Festivals for the series The Nine Yin Manual. His first feature, What Price Survival, followed in 1994 and drew praise from the martial arts master Chang Cheh, and Black Mask (1996), starring Jet Li, opened Western action markets. Later works include A Fighter's Blues (2000) with Andy Lau, the period epic Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (2008), which earned him best art direction nominations at the Asian Film Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards, and the war film White Vengeance (2011), which brought a further Hong Kong Film Awards art direction nomination. In 2015 he wrote and directed the historical action picture Dragon Blade with Jackie Chan, whose first-day mainland gross set a record for a Chan film, and in 2016 Time Raiders took about one billion yuan at the mainland box office, topping that year's summer releases. His later films include The Climbers (2019) and a martial-arts fantasy released in 2022.
Daniel Lee opened overseas markets with action films such as Black Mask and A Fighter's Blues, and doubled as art director on period pictures like Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon and 14 Blades, bringing his training in Chinese painting and calligraphy to production and poster design. The result is a highly recognisable visual style whose films have circulated in both Western and Asian markets.
Achievements
- 1993 · Won a gold award for television production at the New York Festivals for the series The Nine Yin Manual.
- 2000 · Directed A Fighter's Blues, starring Andy Lau.
- 2008 · Wrote and directed Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon, also serving as art director, and earned best art direction nominations at the Asian Film Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards.