Recently, in a livestream, when asked about suspicions of having "frozen" activities against actor Tong Uy Long during the contract termination dispute, director Vu Chinh reacted quite strongly.
He denied the information and declared: "I didn't do anything wrong to him, I have never frozen his activities before.
If one day this matter is really made big, I have evidence that I did not do it at all. All scripts have full email responses, if he himself does not accept the role, he cannot say that. Everyone ask Tong Uy Long if I have ever frozen him?".
However, Vu Chinh's rebuttal was considered by many to be untrue to reality. According to public legal documents, in May 2022, Tong Uy Long filed a lawsuit against Hoan Ngu Anh Thi management company headed by Vu Chinh to request the termination of the contract.
During the lawsuit, he once fell into a situation of not having a film to act in for more than 5 months, commercial activities were almost completely frozen. This clearly does not match Vu Chinh's words that the lack of resources was due to Song Weilong "proactively refusing the script".
In the livestream, Vu Chinh repeatedly emphasized "never frozen", saying that all job invitations were exchanged via email, and he still kept all the documents.
However, netizens and observers in the industry are not very confident. Because in the entertainment industry, "freezing" does not necessarily mean completely not allowing artists to work, but is often a more sophisticated form of restraint: concentrating good resources for other artists in the company, or hindering opportunities to act outside, causing the level of appearance and development space of artists to seriously decrease.
Looking back at Tong Uy Long's famous path, thanks to his main role in modern romance films such as "Next Station is Happiness", "Taking the Name of a Family" in 2020, he quickly rose to the ranks of promising young actors.
However, after that, Tong Uy Long's career fell into a period of prolonged "silence". Meanwhile, Hoan Ngu Anh Thi focused heavily on the idol costume film industry - a direction that is clearly deviated from the modern film market, which is the strength that helped Tong Uy Long become famous.
Therefore, public opinion raises the question: will the company really provide suitable resources for him in the "golden growth" period?
The contract lawsuit ended at the end of 2023, when Tong Uy Long won the lawsuit and officially terminated the contract with Vu Chinh's company.
After self-establishing a personal studio, his career pace accelerated significantly. From 2024, Tong Uy Long seemed to enter a "crazy working regime", continuously joining the film crew for up to 5 films. Among them, the famous work of writer Co Man "I am like a bright sunshine" is being broadcast.
Therefore, when Vu Chinh suddenly reopened the old story while Tong Uy Long's movie was airing, it was considered a "warming-up" action, whoever is hot, stick to that person.
According to QQ, the controversy from Vu Chinh's livestream was outwardly just a "word-of-mouth" case, but in fact once again exposed the hidden corners of power and resource allocation in artist management contracts.
This issue not only revolves around whether "freezing operations" is right or wrong, but also raises deeper questions about the right to development in the peak period of artists, the level of proportionality of company resources and the transparency of contracts.
