According to Box Office Vietnam's box office statistics on December 23, "Avatar 3: Fire and Ashes" has now reached over 121 billion VND in Vietnam, far surpassing all competitors. In the statistical period on December 23 alone, the film earned more than 6.6 billion VND, sold 63,205 tickets with 4,129 screenings - a number that shows dense theatrical coverage and stable appeal after many weeks of release. This is not a surprising result as the Avatar brand has become a global phenomenon, guaranteed by image technology, feature stories and a methodical release strategy.
In the back group, the revenue gap has been significantly widened. Zootopia: The Sky dynamite episode 2 only earned more than 342 million VND, although it still had more than 700 screenings. The King and My Neighbors, Totoro stood at over VND115 million and VND59 million, respectively, showing the audiences preferential purchasing power for options other than Avatar 3. Many other films only recorded a revenue of tens of millions of VND, even under 10 million VND.
Notably, Vietnamese films continue to fall into a state of "death anniversary". Names such as Quy Nam Quan, The Child After the Garden, The Devil Prince, The Ghosts of the pregnancy rental room all have very low revenue, ranging from a few hundred thousand to more than 30 million VND. In particular, some films have only sold a few dozen tickets even though they are still scheduled to be shown in theaters. This reflects the worrying reality: domestic films are having difficulty attracting audiences, both in terms of content and media competitiveness. The film "Miracle Generation" is likely to suffer heavy losses when it earns less than 1 billion VND. Meanwhile, director Hoang Nam's project has a budget of up to 26 billion VND.
The fact that the film only earned a very small amount while the number of screenings was reduced to 19 shows that this project will leave theaters with heavy losses in revenue.
One of the major reasons is the difference in investment scale and experience. Avatar 3 is not just a film, but a film event with a massive fantasy world, advanced special effects and superior visual effects - factors that make audiences willing to spend money to go to the cinema, even watch it many times. Meanwhile, most Vietnamese films currently have limited funding, not new enough scripts, repetitive genres and lack highlights to create a widespread effect.
In addition, the strategy of issuing and distributing screenings also contributes to increasing the gap. The Hollywood blockbuster absolutely dominates in terms of screenings, beautiful time frames and promotion systems, making it even more difficult for Vietnamese films to reach viewers. When theaters gave the top priority to Avatar 3, domestic films were almost pushed into bad time zones or quickly withdrawn from theaters due to low revenue.
