Vietnamese Tet film race: Tran Thanh's Mai confronts Sister Bau - Nhat Trung

Lunar New Year is always the occasion when the Vietnamese box office becomes more exciting than ever. This year, there are 4 Vietnamese films together in theaters. In addition, audiences can also choose from some international films to entertain during Tet.

First, Tran Thanh continued to return to the Tet film track with his ambitious work - Mai. The project gathers many actors familiar to the audience such as Phuong Anh Dao, Tuan Tran, Hong Dao,... The film is Zhencheng's first 18-year-old film project. With an investment scale of VND 50 billion, the project has beautiful images, is invested in context and uses many elaborately staged shots with clear intentions. The content of the film is heavily appreciated for psychological and tragic factors.

Another experienced director who has had a hundred billion films also participating in this year's Tet box office race season is Nhat Trung with Meet Sister Bau. The work belongs to the genre of comedy - family with a story that explores the theme of youth and motherhood, the materials often chosen by filmmakers for the New Year. The project also gathered notable stars such as Dieu Nhi - Anh Tu, Le Giang and many famous artists such as Dan Truong, Kieu Minh Tuan, Mac Van Khoa ... Participate in a cameo role.

Director Hoang Tuan Cuong's Bright Lights is a new breeze of this year's Tet film season. The film is set 30 years ago, telling the story of the Far Fang reform troupe in a difficult period to find the old glory. After the first premieres, the work received a lot of praise from the audience but the spread was not high. Continuing to exploit the forte of the Southwest, director Hoang Tuan Cuong's film can completely become the "umbrella horse" of this Tet season if it conquers the audiences who are interested and love the art of Cai Luong.

Meanwhile, Tra by director Le Hoang – one of the first Vietnamese directors to open the Tet filmmaking movement with G.irl Dancing (2003) – is considered a gritty and difficult work to watch when exploring the topic of infidelity and having many sensitive scenes. The crew revealed that the work had to go through 3 censorships and had many segments cut. The project is considered an unpredictable unknown of this year's Tet film race.

According to the current schedule arrangement of theater clusters across the country, Mai and Meet Sister Bau are also 2 works that are highly expected by distributors when accounting for the majority of screenings. Specifically, in CGV's theaters, director Tran Thanh's film will have an average screening per hour and is pushed to about half an hour per screening in the prime time slot on February 10 (ie the 1st of Tet). Meanwhile, the screening schedule of director Nhat Trung's project is currently scheduled for about 1 screening every 2 hours and raised to 1 hour 1 slot in prime time.

Two other Vietnamese films also chose to be released at this time, Sang Lamp's and Tra, which are completely inferior. On average, these works currently only have 1-2 screenings at each CGV theater on the 1st of Tet and are not classified in the beautiful time slot. Without creating a good word-of-mouth effect and being scheduled, it is likely that Light and Tea will not be able to achieve good sales with such a small number of screenings.

Among the 4 Vietnamese film projects screened in Tet, Meet Again Sister Bau was the first film to "welcome" the audience with early screenings last weekend. According to Box Office Vietnam, the work immediately climbed to the top of the box office with revenue of VND 8.8 billion. However, this result is still considered quite low for a Tet film and has not created a significant boost for the box office at the end of the year.

As can be seen, the heat of the Tet 2024 movie season is currently not achieving the same effect as last year. On social media, discussions about these works have not appeared as much, as densely as the House of Women or Sisters 2 creates. According to YouNet Media's statistics, neither Mai nor Meet Sister Bau were the most popular netizens last week, behind the two TV series She Went to Marry Me and Us 8 years later.

In the first 3 days of Tet of 2023, box office revenue witnesses staggering numbers with revenues of more than 36 billion per day. After that success, perhaps, audiences also demand films with really convincing quality, not merely suitable for superficial entertainment during Tet. This also creates greater pressure on film crews this year when there are projects released in theaters.

Assessing this year's Tet film season, film journalist Nick M said that domestic filmmakers give audiences more diverse choices. However, he predicts this year's box office is unlikely to explode like last year.

The movie "Mai" pocketed 500 billion, the news that the male and female leads received more than 1 billion VND? Bảo Nam17:03:35 04/03/2024In recent years, Vietnam's film industry has witnessed the continuous breaking of many box office records. In particular, the most successful projects are a series of three films directed by Tran Thanh.