After the huge success of Sweet 20 (Em Là Bà Nội Của Anh) in 2015, many local studios decided to remake foreign movies. It became one of the trends of 2017, when many remakes were released including Bạn Gái Tôi Là Sếp (lit. ‘My Girlfriend Is the Boss,’ directed by Ham Tran), a remake of Thailand’s ATM: Er Rak Error, Kiss and Spell (Yêu Đi Đừng Sợ, directed by Stephane Gauger), a remake of Korea’s Spellbound and Ngày Mai Mai Cưới (lit. ‘Tomorrow Mai Will Get Married,’ directed by first-time director Nguyễn Tấn Phước), a remake of Indonesia’s Get Married.
All three films performed respectably and hit break-even point at the box-office. But not all remakes succeeded commercially and critically. One of the biggest flops of 2017 was Sắc Đẹp Ngàn Cân, a remake of the Korean hit 200 Pounds Beauty. Unfortunately, the Korean producers forced the director to copy the original movie frame by frame. Even though the Vietnamese version has good production values, it lacked the soul of the original resulting in many bad reviews and tepid box-office returns. This flop hasn’t deterred local producers however, as 2018 will see the release of at least four remakes of Korean movies such as Kang Hyeong-cheol’s Sunny and Scandal Makers, Kwak Jae-yong’s My Sassy Girl, and Yong-joo Jung’s Never Ending Story.
After several successful co-productions, including Sweet 20 (2015), The Housemaid (Cô Hầu Gái, 2016), and Yêu Đi Đừng Sợ (2017), CJ E&M Vietnam and HKFilms decided to create CJHK Entertainment, a joint-venture company between CJ E&M Vietnam and HKFilms to produce more quality local movies. They also proved that they are the best studio for remakes in Vietnam, when their newest film, Go-Go Sister (Tháng Năm Rực Rỡ, a remake of Sunny, directed by Nguyễn Quang Dũng), released in March 2018, was a box-office phenomenon which got a good reaction from moviegoers and critics.
2016 was a bad year for the box office in Vietnam, with many low-quality movies and big flops. Even in early 2017, during the Lunar New Year period, four local films – including the romantic comedy Bạn Gái Tôi Là Sếp – couldn’t make it into the top three releases for that weekend. The weekend was dominated by Hollywood’s xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, Chinese blockbuster Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back and Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu Yoga, which took the top three spots respectively. Except for Bạn Gái Tôi Là Sếp, other local films had poor production values and featured cheap slapstick comedy. They had no way of competing with the polished and elaborate foreign releases.
In March 2017 there was an interesting line up of local movies that were not comedies. Lô Tô (lit. ‘Lottery Traveling Troupe,’ a drama inspired by a documentary about a group of transgenders who travel around the countryside to sell lottery tickets, directed by first time director Huynh Tuan Anh), Rebellious Hot Boys 2 (Hot Boy Nổi Loạn 2, a sequel to drama Lost in Paradise from Vũ Ngọc Đãng about a gay street prostitute looking for his ex-boyfriend on the streets of Saigon), and Dạ Cổ Hoài Lang (lit. ‘Midnight Drum Causing Longing for Absent Husband’), an adaptation of a famous play about two old Vietnamese men who struggle with a life of loneliness overseas, directed by Nguyễn Quang Dũng.
These movies gained critical acclaim and good word of mouth from moviegoers, but they still struggled to make a profit due to several big Hollywood movies such as Logan, Beauty and the Beast, and especially Kong: Skull Island. With lower budgets, Lô Tô and Rebellious Hot Boys 2 eventually made a profit, while Dạ Cổ Hoài Lang which had the added expense of shooting mostly in Canada, made a loss.
One interesting thing to note about these movies and Có Căn Nhà Nằm Nghe Nắng Mưa (lit. ‘A House Under Rain and Sunshine,’ a drama about a mother waiting for her runaway son who has been accused of murder, directed by Mai Thế Hiệp and Bình Nguyên), is that their lead actors were older theatre performers and industry veterans. It’s quite unusual for films with older actors to perform well, since the majority of Vietnamese moviegoers are young.
In March, Kong: Skull Island was released in Vietnam and it set a box-office record when it made 169 billion VND (US$7.42 million). Before Kong, Fast and Furious 7 held this record with 145 billion VND (US$6.37 million). Kong was helped by the fact it was shot in Vietnam in 2015 in several beautiful locations such as Ninh Binh, Ha Long and Quang Binh. Kong: Skull Island made Vietnamese audiences proud to see their country on the big screen in a Hollywood blockbuster. The hype and success reached such a fever pitch, that the Vietnamese government assigned Jordan Vogt-Roberts, the director of Kong, to be the country’s Tourism Ambassador.
A month later, The Fate of the Furious, the eighth instalment of the Fast and Furious franchise made 154 billion VND (US$6.77 million) at the local box-office, becoming the 2nd highest grossing film of all time in Vietnam. Foreign films such these dominated the local box-office until the end of April.
Until April 2017, the highest-grossing local film was Sweet 20 (a remake of Korean hit Miss Granny), with 102 billion VND (US$4.48 million) in 2015, coming in behind the foreign films. This changed after the release of Jail Bait (Em Chưa 18), a romantic comedy that was released a week after The Fate of the Furious. Jail Bait surprised many with an impressive opening of 13 billion VND (US$571,000) for sneak previews alone. It was produced by established director Charlie Nguyễn, who decided to step back and produce after his big failure in 2016 with Fanatic (Fan Cuồng), and was directed by Lê Thanh Sơn, his first film in seven years since his debut Clash (Bẫy Rồng).
Jail Bait introduced new face Kaity Nguyễn, who plays a 17-year-old high school girl who blackmails a playboy (played by comedian Kiều Minh Tuấn in his first leading role) with a sex tape of them both for “having sex with an under-aged girl.” She wants him to pose as her boyfriend so she can get revenge on her ex who dumped her for another girl. Besides being touching and funny, the movie struck a chord with young female audiences.
Maybe the desires of some women to control playboys or to win a playboy’s heart was a key ingredient. The movie also features a modern lifestyle which is appealing and familiar to the younger generation of Vietnam.
Many young Vietnamese live their lives according to their own desires, they talk about love and sex freely, and some parents even support them. This lifestyle would have been almost non-existent a generation ago, and Jail Bait successfully tapped into this changing social landscape. It made 171 billion VND (US$7.51 million), breaking the record that Kong: Skull Island set a month before and became a phenomenon in Vietnam. It also won The Golden Lotus Award for best picture and best actress at the Vietnam Film Festival. Other awards voted for by the public included the We Choice Awards and Golden Apricot Awards.
This huge success motivated many studios to get back on track producing local films, after delaying their projects due to bad box-office results in 2016. It also highlighted another trend for Vietnamese Cinema in 2017: female-oriented stories. The top five highest grossing local films in 2017 were Jail Bait, The Girl From Yesterday (Cô Gái Đến Từ Hôm Qua, directed by Phan Gia Nhật Linh, who previously directed Sweet 20), The Tailor (Cô Ba Sài Gòn, directed by first-time directors Kay Nguyễn and Trần Bửu Lộc), Mother-In-Law (Mẹ Chồng, directed by Lý Minh Thắng) and Bạn Gái Tôi Là Sếp. Jail Bait is about modern high school girls, The Girl From Yesterday is about high school girls and their innocent first love memories during the 1990s, The Tailor is about a fashion designer in the 1960s who time-travels to modern day Saigon to learn a lesson about the traditional “áo dài” dress, Mother-In-Law is about a conflict between a mother and daughters-in-law during the 1950s, and Bạn Gái Tôi Là Sếp is about an office girl competing with her boyfriend for a promotion.
Besides young females making up a large proportion of the cinema going public, one of the reasons for this female-centric trend is there are more talented young actresses than actors. Besides A-list stars such as Miu Lê, Veronica Ngô, and Thanh Hằng, or ‘the next big thing’ like Ninh Dương Lan Ngọc, there are newcomers such as Kaity Nguyễn and Hoàng Yến Chibi, and Tháng Năm Rực Rỡ, who can all carry a movie by themselves.
One of the biggest challenges that Vietnamese film producers are now facing is the ticket price decrease. Starting around mid-July 2017, CGV Cinemas – the biggest cinema chain in Vietnam – decided to change the ticket policy by pushing their ticket promotion campaign. The average ticket price decreased from around 100k VND (US$4.4 dollars) to 45k VND (US$2.2 dollars) in selected theatres at certain times of day. To compete with this, other cinema chains such as Galaxy, BHD, and Lotte also decreased their ticket prices, from an average of 80k VND (US$3.5 dollars) to 35k VND (US$1.5 dollars).
The Girl from Yesterday became the first ‘victim’ of this policy. When the movie reached 1 million admissions, this equated to around 55 billion VND (US$2.42 million). For comparison in 2015, when Sweet 20 reached 1 million admissions, this resulted in a box-office take of around 90 billion VND (US$3.95 million). In the end, The Girl From Yesterday made a healthy 76 billion VND (US$3.3 million) at the box-office, although you can see from the example above, if the movie had been released just a year earlier it would have generated a much bigger gross.
The Tailor was also another ‘victim’ of the new ticket pricing policy. In 2016, Veronica Ngô Thanh Vân cried at the press conference for her movie Tấm Cám: Chuyện Chưa Kể, because CGV refused to show it after they couldn’t agree on a profit sharing percentage. This time, although CGV agreed to screen The Tailor, she pointed out that because of CGV’s new ticket price, it hurt her movie because when it reached more than 1.5 million admissions, which is higher than Tấm Cám, it made only 60 billion VND (US$2.63 million), compared to 70 billion VND (US$3.07 million) for Tấm Cám.
Some small movies did earn a tiny profit, such as Alley of Love (Xóm Trọ 3D, directed by first time director Hoàng Tuấn Cường, an adaptation of a comedy play about a group of gay people who live together in a small house), Little Sunshine 2 (Nắng 2, directed by Đồng Giao, about a convict who kidnaps a mentally ill lottery ticket girl and a female taxi driver and forces them to drive him to a hospital), and Ngày Mai Mai Cưới.
Most of the other low budget films are of bad quality, and give Vietnamese movies a bad reputation in the eyes of many local audiences. However even some big budget films like Lôi Báo, directed by established director Victor Vũ and aided by Hollywood action choreographer Vincent Wang (Doctor Strange), failed at the box office. The high-concept action film is about a comic book writer who has cancer. When he switches his brain to another body to cure the disease, he also becomes a superhero. Even though the film has high production values, impressive action scenes, and is one of the first superhero movies in Vietnamese cinema, it still failed to connect with audiences.
Although there were many successful mainstream Vietnamese movies in 2017, art house and indie films are still struggling to find an audience. The Way Station (Đảo của dân ngụ cư, directed by actress-turned-director Hồng Ánh) and Father and Son (Cha Cõng Con, directed by first time director Lương Đình Dũng) both failed at the box-office, but won international film festival awards. But none of these films made it to big major film international festivals.
Phan Xi Nê