Success and Failure of Film Remakes in Vietnam: An Example of Blood Moon Party

Remaking foreign hit movie scripts has become a familiar choice on Vietnamese screens, however, it is a big challenge because it is not easy to equal or overcome the shadow of the original. The current cinemas are seen as the remake of films from the past with more attention to cultural, political and economic adaptations rather than aesthetic significance. The research looks at some recent film remakes to analyze their success and failure together with an analysis of Blood Moon Party (Tiệc trăng máu, Nguyen Quang Dung, 2020) as an example of success in the trend of making film remakes in Vietnam. The findings show that a film remake is successful thanks to good adaptation of the original script to Vietnamese contexts, introduction to new elements, excellent performance of artists and appropriate communication. The failure factors are unchanged script, low budget for production, artists’ poor acting, inappropriate dialogues and illogical storytelling.