Run Run Shaw, the Hong Kong media mongul died peacefully today, 7 January 2014. He was 107.

One of the most influential figures in Asia's entertainment industry, spanning from television to movies, he played a major role in the growth of South-east Asia's entertainment industry in its early years.

His television station Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) is now one of the most successful television broadcast company in Asia, and his Shaw Brothers Studios churn out nearly 1000 movies (The One Armed Swordsman, The Five Fingers of Death) that even Hollywood directors like Quentin Tarantino took interest in.

As on of the cinema's defining figures, Shaw popularized Chinese kung-fu films in the West and helped turn Hong Kong into a 'Hollywood East' over an 80-year career. He was knighted in 1977 and was known as Sir Run Run ever since.

He and his brother Runme ventured to the region in the 1920s and first started the Shaw Brothers studio in Singapore in 1924 where they made their own silent films and set up a chain of cinema theatres, including Singapore's first air-conditioned cinema at Beach Road.

While Runme remained in Singapore, Sir Run Run moved to Hong Kong in 1957 as the head of the Shaw Brothers studio during Hong Kong cinema's golden era from the 1976s to the 1980s.