The first-look poster of Thanh Sói, the sequel to Hai Phượng (Furie), a blockbuster last year by female producer Ngô Thanh Vân. The film will be completed late this year and in cinemas in early 2021. Photo courtesy of the producer

Actress Thanh Hoa. She plays Thanh Sói, a gangster in the 2019 blockbuster Hai Phượng. Her role impressed audiences and led the producer to begin work on a sequel this year. Photo courtesy of the producer)

HCM CITY – Movie star, director and producer Ngô Thanh Vân is working on a new movie, Thanh Sói (Pain Changes People), after several months of filming her projects on Vietnamese tales.

Vân and her studio, Studio68, will complete post-production late this year and release the film during Tết (Lunar New Year) in February next year.

The film is the sequel to Hai Phượng (Furie), a blockbuster by director Lê Văn Kiệt that was released in cinemas last year.

Hai Phượng is about Hai Phượng (played by Vân), a former gangster, who tries to live a quiet life in the countryside with her daughter. Things change when the girl is kidnapped and Phượng starts a journey to save her daughter.

In Việt Nam, the film earned VNĐ200 billion ($8.6 million) one month after its release.

It was distributed in the US by Well Go USA Entertainment. It was screened in 600 cinemas in cities such as Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, San Jose, Portland, Seattle and New York.

It is also distributed on the streaming service Netflix.

In the sequel, Thanh Sói, Vân backed away from acting to perfect her work as a producer.

On her Facebook page, Vân announced yesterday that her film features Thanh Sói, a new leader of the gang who replaces Hai Phượng.

“I saw the exotic beauty of Thanh Sói in the blockbuster Hai Phượng . I thought money could be made from her,” said Vân.

The film, Thanh Sói, features the gangster when she was a child and teenager. Her tragic life, before entering the gang, is also included.

In Hai Phượng, Thanh Sói was played by Thanh Hoa.

Producer Vân has not disclosed the name of the actress who played Thanh Sói in the sequel.

Audiences can only see her back on the film’s first-look poster, which appeared in local media on Wednesday.

Vân’s latest film as an actor is Da 5 Bloods, a production by US director and Oscar winner Spike Lee. It is the third US film in which Vân has appeared.

She plays the role of Vietnamese woman named Hanoi Hannah. The film stars Chadwick Boseman, who is known as the Black Panther in the Marvel Universef films, Delroy Lindo and Clarke Peters.

Vân developed her talent as a movie producer after working for more than 10 years in the industry.

Her first movie as a producer was the comedy film Ngày Nảy Ngày Nay (Once Upon A Time), a co-production between the artist and and her partner, Canadian-Vietnamese director Cường Ngô, in 2015.  

One year later, she directed her first film, Tấm Cám-Chuyện Chưa Kể (Tấm Cám-The Untold Story), a fantasy work based on a fairy tale best known as the Vietnamese version of Cinderella.

She invested more than VNĐ20 billion (nearly U$900,000) in filming.

Tấm Cám-Chuyện Chưa Kể was released in 37 cinema complexes in Hà Nội, HCM City and provinces, earning more than VNĐ70 billion ($3.1 million) in ticket sales.

“I hope my new film, Thanh Sói, will meet the taste of moviegoers,” said 42-year-old Vân, the owner of Studio88 and VAA, one of the country’s leading private entertainment agencies.— VNS