The trend of making films set in foreign countries
Some notable films filmed abroad include: Quyen, Hai Lua, Da co hoai lang, Dich ton doc dac, Duyen tran thoat tuc...
In recent times, Vietnamese cinema has had the film “Fragile Flower” by Mai Thu Huyen filmed mainly in the US. Recently, the film “Domino: The Last Exit” (released on October 11) was also filmed in the US.
The film revolves around An (played by Thuan Nguyen) - the son of a Vietnamese boss who manages underground gang activities in the US. Hearing that his father was murdered by a rival, An goes to the US and is drawn into disputes and battles between gangs in the underworld. He also seeks revenge for his father.
On October 25, audiences will enjoy another Vietnamese action film also filmed abroad. Hotgirl Squad has a setting spanning across 5 Asian countries including Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam.
In general, the above films have received great attention from the public since their release. The reason is that in addition to the cast, viewers are also curious about the film's scenes. This helps the project have a good media effect before its official release.
The topics that are often filmed abroad mostly revolve around the lives of Vietnamese people living abroad - these contents have their own unique and new qualities. Despite these advantages, films filmed in foreign locations often have large budgets, are difficult to travel to, but the revenue they bring is not effective.
Big investment but not effective
Filming domestically is already very difficult, while filming internationally is even more difficult.
To do this, filmmakers have to go through many challenges, because sending a large film crew abroad is very complicated and expensive. According to many Vietnamese film crews, they have to spend 2-3 times more than filming domestically if they want to film scenes abroad. In particular, preparing enough documents and papers with great detail about the filming scene, buying insurance for the entire cast and staff, and ensuring that the selected locations are on the list of locations allowed for professional filming abroad has posed no small challenge for the film crew.
However, many Vietnamese films filmed abroad but when released domestically do not bring good revenue. Typically, the film "Fragile Flower" by Mai Thu Huyen had a production budget of up to tens of billions of VND, but when released in theaters, the film only earned more than 400 million VND. This means that director Mai Thu Huyen's film crew suffered heavy losses even though she previously said it was very difficult to film scenes in the US.
“Domino: The Last Exit” is not doing any better, having premiered on October 11, but after 10 days, the film has only earned over 500 million VND - a figure far below the expectations of the film crew. It is known that “Domino: The Last Exit” has a budget of several tens of billions of VND because all the scenes were filmed in the US.
It can be seen that the reason for the failure of films set in foreign countries is largely due to the choice of script. Although it is known that filming internationally will create something new for the audience, films such as “Domino: The Last Exit” and “Fragile Flower” are criticized for having outdated scripts and uneven acting by the stars. Just beautiful footage of scenes filmed abroad is not enough to keep the audience.
It can be said that Vietnamese films shot abroad, although not yet making a splash in terms of quality, are still a very unique highlight of domestic cinema. However, in order for the film to bring in good revenue, it requires filmmakers to have careful calculations in choosing the script and cast. Because it is impossible to "spend" a lot of money to film beautiful scenes but lack of attention to content is also counterproductive, leading to loss of revenue, putting a burden on the producer.
