Lovesick

Source: Sequoia Entertainment

‘Lovesick’

Hsu Fu-Hsiang’s campus romance drama Lovesick opened strongly as the first local film to cross $302,000 (NT$10m) this year at Taiwan’s box office and scored a rare near day-and-date release with mainland China.

The coming-of-age film follows a high school troublemaker who finds it convenient to be sick and goes to great lengths to fake it, only to realise that a fellow classmate suffers from a terminal illness. It explores first love, teenage confusion and mental health though the lens of high school life. The cast is led by Zhan Huai-Yun, Chiang Chi, Liu Hsiu-Fu and Huang Guan-Zhi.

It opened on April 2 through Sony Pictures in Taiwan, banking on the long weekend from the Qing Ming holiday – the tomb sweeping day – on April 4. It took $362,000 (NT$12m) from its five-day opening weekend (April 2-6), making it the biggest local film this year and the first local film to cross the NT$10m milestone since last August, following Gatao: Like Father Like Son and Dead Talents Society.

The film is also set to open in mainland China on April 19 through Alibaba Pictures, making it one of the few Taiwanese features to receive a near-simultaneous release in the territory in more than a decade.

Taiwanese campus romance films have delivered a strong track record of connecting with audiences across Asia. Giddens Ko’s You Are The Apple Of My Eye directed by and Frankie Chen’s Our Times were breakout hits, reportedly grossing $40m in 2011 and $84m in 2015 respectively in Asia, including mainland China.

Lovesick marks the first feature backed by Taipei-based Sequoia Entertainment, which is part of venture capital firm Grandi Holdings. Its previous titles include Disney+ series Women In Taipei and LGBTQ+ series The Nipple Talk.

“In today’s international film market, segmentation has become increasingly inevitable,” Sequoia Entertainment CEO Lincoln Lai told Screen. “Thai horror films are dominating across Asia, Korean dramas have achieved global appeal, and Taiwanese campus love romance films have consistently sustained strong expectations in the Asian market.

“The key lies in solidifying one’s market advantage, maintaining strict control over production costs, and delivering works that are high in quality, conceptuality, and originality, enabling us to create IPs with limitless potentiality for cross-platform expansion. This, in my view, is the only ray of hope for the film industry to shine through these challenging times.”

Taiwan’s box office continues to struggle post-pandemic, with local hits few and far between.

Director Hsu’s feature debut was 2021 horror comedy Treat Or Trick, a Taiwanese remake of 2004 Korean film To Catch A Virgin Ghost, and received the jury’s choice award at Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. Hsu won best TV series and best director prizes for TV drama series The Way We Were at Taiwan’s Golden Bell Awards in 2015.

Topics