(Dan Tri) – Many people wonder if the National Cinema Center’s ticket booking website has crashed in recent days, is it because of the movie `Peach, Pho and Piano` or because of the movie `Mai`?
By the morning of February 22, the website of the National Cinema Center was still inaccessible after 4 days of being down.
Previously, on February 18, Mr. Vu Duc Tung – Acting Director of the National Cinema Center – confirmed with Dan Tri reporters that the Center’s website crashed because of the number of visitors buying tickets to watch the movie Dao.
On February 20, audiences had to line up at the theater to wait to buy tickets directly because the fanpage of the National Cinema Center also apologized for not being able to fix the problem.
Audiences lined up in front of the ticket gate at the screening room of the National Cinema Center to watch `Peach, Pho, and Piano` (Photo: Minh Nhan).
Many viewers wondered, in the past days, while Mai had up to 50 screenings, the website and application still operated normally, while Dao, Pho and Piano only had 16 screenings/day, causing the entire system to crash.
So, based on what basis and data can we say that the movie Dao, Pho and Piano caused the website to crash and not director Tran Thanh’s Mai – the movie that is `storming` the box office today?
Talking to Dan Tri reporter, expert and critic Nguyen Phong Viet said: `I think the possibility of the website collapsing because of the number of tickets for Dao, pho and piano has no clear basis, but it is possible.
Media expert Nguyen Ngoc Long frankly expressed: `Now, if we say that the website collapsed because of movie A or B, I find that a rather strange and confusing thought. The website’s collapse could be due to many reasons.
Therefore, it is impossible to immediately conclude the popularity of this or that movie based on the website crash.
Sharing with Dan Tri reporter, Mr. Vu Duc Tung – Acting Director of the National Cinema Center – said that because the website has not been restored, the Center cannot check detailed data, so it is difficult to pay.
However, according to Mr. Tung, during the 5 days of Tet, the Center serves 14,000-15,000 spectators each day. There are days when the number of spectators booking online tickets reaches 10,000 but the system still works well.
`Mai, Dao, pho and piano all came out in theaters on February 10 (the first day of Tet). At that time, we arranged 20 screenings of Mai, then gradually increased to 50 shows, while Dao, pho and piano
I only know that when Dao, pho and piano were searched a lot, the number of visitors increased, the website was overloaded and crashed,` Mr. Tung shared.
Mr. Tung added that before the website crashed, the Center checked the system, there were up to 15,000 people accessing the website, nearly 1,000 people successfully booked tickets, among them were many movie tickets for Dao, Pho and Pho.
`Currently, the Center has reduced 50% of the screenings of the movie Mai to switch to Peach, Pho and Piano. Specifically, the movie Mai on February 18 had 52 screenings, today it is reduced to 39 screenings, Dao, Pho
As of 6:00 p.m. on February 21, the number of ticket sales for the movie Mai was 1,331, while Dao, Pho and Piano were 6,129 tickets,` a representative of the National Cinema Center informed.
When asked whether or not the National Cinema Center promoted peaches, pho and piano due to the website crash, Mr. Tung said `there is no such thing`.
Acting Director of the National Cinema Center affirmed: `We don’t need to promote, the movies Peach, Pho and Piano are currently hot. No one wants the website to go down, that will also affect our revenue.`
A scene from the movie `Peach, Pho and Piano` (Photo: Provided by the film crew).
Evaluating the media explosion story of Dao, pho and piano, expert Nguyen Ngoc Long said that if a movie is only shown in one place, a single Center, `selling out` is not as important as we think.
`Normally, when we say a performance or a movie is `sold out` or `out of showtime` it means that tickets cannot be bought at all theaters.
In this case, we can only call it `local sell-out`, meaning that only screenings at that theater are sold out, it cannot be applied to the entire country,` Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Long said.
Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Long further shared that for a film that was not strongly promoted and was released according to State standards to achieve such positive signals is commendable.
`However, I feel that the fact that people are talking about it as if it were a movie that was widely released in thousands of theaters and `sold out` is misleading in terms of reality,` he said.
Peaches, Pho and Piano are State films included in the pilot release and dissemination plan for a number of films produced using the State budget issued by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
The National Cinema Center is the only location in the country currently showing this work.
According to data from Box Office Vietnam – an independent statistical unit, after more than 10 days of release, Dao, Pho and Piano recorded a revenue of more than 500 million VND, Mai reached the milestone of 395 billion VND.