Kok Kok-leung, born on 15 November 1958 and educated at Tsui Wah English College, is a Hong Kong television director. In 1978 he entered TVB's seventh acting class, where he was a junior to the director Johnnie To; he then moved behind the camera, rising from assistant director to, by 1981, second director on the series The Rascal Emperor (Lau Mong Wong Dai) and, in 1983, director. That year he served as an executive director on the classic Jin Yong adaptation The Legend of the Condor Heroes, assisting his senior Johnnie To and marking his first involvement with Jin Yong's work, and he was also one of the directors of The Return of the Condor Heroes, starring Andy Lau and Idy Chan. In 1986 he directed the period drama The Sword of the Soaring Dragon (Sing Gim Tin Giu), starring Andy Lau and Chong Ching-yee. He went on to direct numerous Jin Yong series, including The Book and the Sword, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, The Duke of Mount Deer (with Tony Leung and Andy Lau) and The Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain, making him one of television's most prolific adapters of Jin Yong. In the mid-to-late 1980s he moved to ATV, and in the early 1990s began working in Taiwan and mainland China, directing martial-arts and historical drama there for many years; he directed The Legend of the Condor Heroes in mainland China with Yu Min and Wang Rui in 2003, starring Li Yapeng and Zhou Xun, produced the film Fei but fei in 2008, and had earlier directed the action drama Huo Yuanjia in 2007. In 2011 he was lead director of the mainland remake of Water Margin, starring Zhang Hanyu. One of the driving forces behind TVB's golden age of martial-arts drama in the 1980s, he has long worked on martial-arts and historical material on the mainland and remained active there, directing Till the End of the Moon in 2023. His output has been prolific across Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland.
Having worked on several Jin Yong adaptations in the 1980s, Kok's command of martial-arts material made these series a collective memory for Chinese-language television audiences; his later move to the mainland made him one of the pioneers among Hong Kong television people opening up that market, carrying Hong Kong's production methods northwards.
Achievements
- 1978 · Entered TVB's seventh acting class and later moved behind the camera as a director
- 1983 · Worked as an executive director on The Legend of the Condor Heroes and directed part of The Return of the Condor Heroes the same year
- 2003 · Co-directed a mainland version of The Legend of the Condor Heroes with Yu Min and Wang Rui
- 2011 · Served as lead director of the mainland remake of Water Margin