Pee Mak scares up Thai box office

The film opened March 28 and as of April 7 had taken $8.93m (THB261.1m) at the Thai box office.

At the moment, the country’s highest grossing Thai film is The Legend Of Suriyothai at $10.98m (THB320m). GTH ventures that Pee Mak has had the highest-grossing opening week for a Thai film and reached the TBH200m mark in a record nine days, making it likely that it could beat The Legend Of Suriyothai’s record before the end of its run in theatres.

Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter, 4BIA), the film is based on the legend of Pee Mak and his ghost wife Nak. The story - which also served as the basis of Nonzee Nimibutr’s 1999 dramatic feature Nang Nak - tells of a man who has to leave his pregnant wife to go fight in the Siamese-Vietnamese War and returns home to live unwittingly with a faithful ghost.

In this version, Pee Mak, played by Mario Maurer, saves the lives of four fellow soldiers and returns home to the ghosts of his wife (Davika Hoorne) and child who have both died in his absence. The four war buddies are known to audiences as the quartet of funny guys from the director’s previous films 4BIA and Phobia2 - Pongsatorn Jongwilas, Autharut Khongrasri, Kantapat Permpoonpatcharasuk and Nuttapong Chartpong – and provide laughs throughout.

So far, Pee Mak has made it to number four in all-time box office rankings (foreign and domestic) after The Legend Of Suriyothai, Transformers 3 (TBH300) and Avatar (TBH271m). The Songkran Festival, the Thai New Year holiday which starts Saturday, April 13 through to April 17, could help boost box office.