40 Thai films for Singapore

Singapore's Innoform Media has inked a deal with Sahamongkol Films, to bring in 40 titles by the end of 2007, according to an article in the Electric New Paper. (Choon, Chang May, July 18, 2006, "Are Korean films losing appeal?")

Ten of the new titles will make it to the big screen while others will go straight to "video", the article says.

They include Ong-Bak 2 and its female counterpart, Chocolate (which hopefully would be among the 10 films screening theatrically).

The article is about Korean movies that have oversaturated the market in Singapore.

"We don't want to make the same mistake and flood the market with too many movies, so we will regulate the flow of Thai releases," said Lim Teck, general manager of Innoform.

This is interesting to me, because if the films are released on DVD in Singapore, I would think that they would include English subtitles, since English is the official language in the city-state. So it's something to watch for, because virtually all DVD releases of Thai movies in Thailand are omitting the English subs -- unless you want a crappy movie like Navy Boys.

However, in looking at Innoform's website, it seems the company only releases movies in the VCD format. They have a ton of Thai titles already, such as Fake, 102 Bangkok Robbery, Pisaj, Ghost of Mae Nak and 999-9999, all in Thai with hard-burned Chinese and English subtitles. It's not as good as DVD, but for some movies, particularly the puzzler Fake, it's the only way to see the movie on video with English subs.

And, I wonder what other Singaporean distributors are up to when it comes to video releases of Thai films?

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)