Lucky Losers return

Lucky Losers, the soccer comedy that featured players from Laos taking on regional titans Thailand in a bid to enter the World Cup playoffs, but was pulled from release after Laotian officials objected to its depiction of Laotians, is back in cinemas. It's been edited, with any traces the Lao flag removed, and the dialog has been looped so that the team comes from a tiny, fictional Southeast Asian nation known as Awee.

Awee!

Remaining prints of the old version have been burned, according to Soopsip in The Nation on Wednesday.

"Last Friday, 57 copies of the film Mak Tae Loke Talueng (Lucky Loser), costing more than 2 million baht, were destroyed by GTH Company at an event witnessed by co-producer BBTV Production Company and Kantana Film Labs," Soop Sip reports. "The spools held the version of the movie responsible for the protests earlier this year from the Lao PDR Embassy in Bangkok, which led to the studio withdrawing the flick from release."

"We have been asked what we would do if the problem version were ever leaked and released. We decided the only way we could ensure that would never happen was to destroy every copy," GTH President Visute Poolvoralaks was quoted as saying.

"As the director, it's sad to see it destroyed. But it's not a big deal," Adisorn Trisirikasem told Soopsip. "Anyway, the new version is more entertaining. We've changed the country's name and we are free to say whatever we want."

More than 3 million baht was spent editing the film, which initially cost 60 million baht, and without re-editing, probably would have been shelved permanently.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)