According to Chinese media, the film "City Builder" starring Zhao Liying and Huang Xiaoming will air in November. However, due to licensing issues, the film will be released to audiences at the end of December 2025 or January 2026.
Before airing, the film did not receive many positive reviews from the audience due to the reason related to both the content and cast.
The film "City Builder" is adapted from the novel Chinese Peasant City by author Chu Hieu Quan. If in the original, the author emphasized the importance of the male lead, in the TV series, the female lead was the central character and took up more screen time.
This change creates a significant difference in the plot, no longer ensuring the details as in the original novel. This unintentionally lost the hearts of many original fans.
In addition, both Trieu Le Dinh and Huynh Hieu Minh are in a difficult period in their careers. Previously, a series of Zhao Liying's movies released in theaters did not achieve the expected revenue. The short film "In human world" was also heavily criticized for its emptiness of script and degraded acting.
As for Huynh Hieu Minh, his latest movie that just released in theaters is " Sunshine Club" with a revenue of only about 4.9 million yuan (VND18 billion), a figure that is too low compared to the production cost of 18 million yuan (nearly 67 billion VND). Previously, the film "The Wig" also withdrew from theaters because there were too few viewers and the revenue only reached 4.2 million yuan (14.4 billion VND).
This shows that even famous names familiar to the audience cannot guarantee the success of the work. The failure of the two actors' previous films created a hesitant mentality among fans, not being too excited about the new work, "The City Builder".
In the film, Trieu Le Dinh cut her hair short, gained weight and wore dark makeup to transform into the character in the most realistic way. Huang Xiaoming also shake off his usual attention- paid, masculine image, instead with long hair, sun- gray skin, and beard.
"City Builder" is set in the early 1980s, when Binh Xuyen district faced economic development challenges in the wave of reform and opening. The two young cadres Ly Thu Thu (Trieu Le Dinh) and Trinh Duc Thanh (Huynh Hieu Minh) are steadfast in the ideal of "a city of the people created by the people", together initiating the project to build Nguyet Hai Tran - a new urban area formed from the primeval alluvial land.
Relying on the national budget, they and tens of thousands of farmers mobilized capital, joined businesses, and gradually built a modern city from zero. On that journey, pioneers face countless challenges - from mechanistic barriers, conflicts of interest to personal losses while still persistently pursuing reform ideals.
The film is expected to air on CCTV1 and Tencent Video platform. The film is expected to achieve the same results as " synchronous things", a project with the same theme aired in 2025 by Duong Mich.
