Box-office stretch

 It’s already passed the Bt525 million mark in box-office takings and the Thai movie “Pee Mak Phra Khanong” shows no sign of stopping as it continues its march to set a new record and become the country’s top-grossing film.

 Quickly overtaking Hollywood blockbuster “GI Joe: Retaliation”, released the same week, “Pee Mak” stayed in the fast lane and a week later swept past the rival Thai release “Khoo Kam”.

Produced by the GTH studio and directed by Banjong Pisunthanakun, “Pee Mak” is based on the famous ghost story “Mae Nak Phra Khanong”, about a young woman who dies in childbirth while her husband Mak is away at war. He returns to his happy life at home, unaware that his wife is a fearsome ghost.

Adapted for film and television dozens of times, Banjong’s version adds a comic twist, with four of Mak’s bumbling army pals accompanying him home. They try to figure out how to tell Mak his wife is a ghost without angering Nak.

“Social networking has been pivotal to our success,” says GTH president Visute Poolvoralaks. 

People of all ages have flocked to theatres since the movie opened on March 28, among them elderly folk who hadn’t been to the cinema in decades.

“Many have come to see the movie several times, each time with a different group of friends. Watching ‘Pee Mak’ has become a social activity that reunites old friends and family,” says Pannatat Phromsupa, the general manager of the UIP Thailand, the distributor of “GI Joe: Retaliation”.

GTH premiered the film with a special grand opening that saw some 3,000 guests turn up. They loved the film and made their feelings known on the social networks even as they left the cinema. Assuming that each has around 100 friends on Facebook or Twitter, those admiring messages reached out to 300,000 people in just one night.

But comments on social networks, of course, don’t always work out for the best. The highly anticipated “Khoo Kam”, a remake based on a romance novel by National Artist author Thommayanti, did very well in its pre-release campaign, but it received enough negative feedback after its premiere to hurt its box-office takings. To date, “Khoo Kam”, produced by the M-Thirtynine studio, has grossed around Bt50 million.

“The result been cruel to ‘Khoo Kam’,” Pannatat says, pointing out that three highly anticipated movies were released in two consecutive weeks, the first time this has happened in the Thai film industry. 

After seeing the potential of “Pee Mak”, Pannatat decided to move up “GI Joe”, putting it on general release the day before the comedy ghost movie. His strategy paid off: “GI Joe” earned Bt16 million that first day and will end its run with a tidy gross of Bt120 million.

“I wanted to check the real capability of ‘GI Joe’ and see how much it would earn in normal circumstance by releasing it on its own on the Wednesday. We are satisfied with the income,” he says. He has reason to be pleased: the takings are up by 50 per cent on the first part in the “GI Joe” franchise, which earned around Bt80 million.

The pre release promotions for “Pee Mak” and “Khoo Kam” showed the films running head-to-head, with their teasers and trailers generating significant buzz.

“Overall I think ‘Khoo Kam’ was ahead during that period but a successful movie is not just about good marketing but also the content and ‘Pee Mak’ triumphed once people started watching it. It embodies the typical Thai film that people love,” says Pannatat.

“We were confident in our movie but ‘Khoo Kam’ always seemed to be that little further ahead,” says Visute.

GTH worked hard on its pre release teasers and trailers. “Our mission was finding the best way of telling people that ‘Pee Mak’ has three keywords - romance, horror and comedy,” says Visute.

Another point in the film’s favour is that it takes the trouble to explain half Thai, half German actor Mario Maurer’s luk krueng looks by having his character Mak admit in the movie that his real name is Mark and that his dad was an American missionary who’d returned home to the US. 

“The pre-release campaign needed to let the audience understand what they were going to see in the movie so they didn’t misunderstand the film. That way they’ll enjoy the movie and not feel they were in any way fooled by the trailers,” explains Visute, who is hailed as a marketing guru and has been behind the success of many Thai blockbusters including Nonzee Nimibutr’s “Nang Nak”.

“Khoo Kam” failed to live up to the hype and disappointed fans, not least because the romantic scenes that have appeared in every remake to date were removed and the performances of the cast, with the exception of the protagonist, Nadech Kugimiya, were stiff and unconvincing.

With new multiplex cinemas opening all over the country over the last few years, cinema capacity is now at a level where takings can in theory gross almost Bt50 million gross in any given day. That capacity had never been proved until April 29 when so many people flocked to see “GI Joe: Retaliation” and “Pee Mak” that the income from the two movies reached the Bt50 million mark.

“It’s good for the entire movie market that two promising movies challenged each other the same week. It proved that we don’t have to worry that screening two films will result on the income being down on both,” says Visute. 

But a snafu in the film distribution system could yet affect the claim of “Pee Mak” to breaking the box-office record.

According to Visute, the Bt550 million generated by “The Legend of Suriyothai” was calculated on box office takings for whole country and was easy to work out as the movie was the only film ever to enter a revenue-sharing deal with all theatres. Its gross in Bangkok alone was around Bt312 million.

Revenue sharing between theatre and film company distributor usually only applies to cinemas in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. For screening in other provinces, the film is sold to six regional distributors at a net price and these distributors enter revenue-sharing deals with the theatres in their areas.

“Pee Mak’s” income of Bt525 million therefore takes into account only box office revenues for Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Visute estimates that if the provinces were added to the equation, the total income could well have reached Bt1 billion. He justifies the figure based on the number of new multiplex theatres that have opened in recent years and the increase in ticket prices since “Suriyothai” was released in 2001.

“We have to estimate the income because the regional distributors have never given us the income they earned from the film. In the next five years, all movie theatres should have an online system and we’ll be able to check the exact national box office record” says Visute.

He expects that “Pee Mak” will end its run with a new record of around Bt550 to Bt560 million.