Click here to read the full article.
Vietnamese films held a 70.6% share of the domestic box office in the first five months of 2026, up from 62.2% across the full year of 2025 and 42.6% in 2023, according to figures presented by Dinh Thanh Huong, executive
chair of Galaxy Studio and CEO of Galaxy Entertainment Holding, at the inaugural DANAFF Industry Days in Danang, Vietnam.
Speaking at the Furama Resort, Dinh delivered the opening keynote of the two-day industry program attached to the 4th Danang Asian Film Festival. The presentation, titled “Vietnam: From Emerging Market to Film Nation,” framed the data as evidence that Vietnamese cinema has passed the point of “potential” and entered a period of commercial and creative maturity.
The 2025 market posted gross box office revenue exceeding $215 million – a 22.5% year-on-year increase – on sales of more than 70 million tickets, with 47 Vietnamese titles released during the year, up from 26 in 2024. Dinh attributed the share surge partly to a generational shift in the audience: 69% of Vietnamese moviegoers are Gen Z, she said, and 72.8% of tickets are now purchased through digital platforms, with word-of-mouth increasingly determining whether a title succeeds or fails.
Production budgets are rising in parallel. Where major local projects carried price tags of VND40–50 billion ($1.52–$1.9 million) in 2023, Dinh said the market is now seeing productions budgeted at VND100–130 billion ($3.8–$4.9 million) and above. She projected total Vietnamese film output to reach 80 titles by 2027, up from 47 last year, with production, distribution and marketing budgets projected to exceed $5 million per film.
Genre diversification was cited as a key driver of audience expansion. Dinh noted that the market has moved beyond its historic reliance on comedy and family films, pointing to recent commercial performances in war, action, historical and detective genres alongside the country’s established strength in horror.
The keynote doubled as a pitch to the international buyers and distributors gathered at the Industry Days, which are running June 30 through July 1 alongside the broader festival. Dinh outlined five areas she said she hoped to develop with overseas partners: co-production, financial investment, distribution and marketing, technology and innovation, and intellectual property development.
“Cinema is not just a business,” Dinh said. “Cinema is how a nation tells its own story.”
Galaxy Studio – whose credits include “Dreamy Eyes,” “You and Trinh,” “Bunny!!,” “Detective Kien: The Headless Horror,” and the record-breaking war epic “Red Rain” – is the Vietnamese partner of Sony Pictures and operates more than 30 cinema complexes nationwide.
DANAFF Industry Days – a new initiative launched by the Danang Asian Film Festival and the Vietnam Film Development Association – is bringing together Vietnamese studios including Galaxy Studio, BHD Vietnam Media Corp., Mockingbird Pictures, CJ HK Entertainment, and ProductionQ with international distributors and buyers from South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and the U.S. for lineup presentations and one-to-one business meetings.
