Buying Tickets For Teochew Film Dear You Is Like Buying BTS Tix? Moviegoers Face Long Online Queues On Golden Village Website

By now, you'd be familiar with the chaos that comes with buying tickets for BTS concerts, Taylor Swift gigs and more.

But bet you haven't heard of the time a Teochew film caused a frenzy online at the Golden Village website.

Well, now it's happened. And people are likening their experience to buying tickets for hugely popular concerts on sites like Ticketmaster. 

Chinese blockbuster Dear You has become one of Singapore's most unexpectedly sought-after movie tickets, with audiences scrambling to secure tix for screenings in the film's original Teochew dialect.

There were initially eight original-dialect screenings lined up, but after the film premiered on June 18, demand quickly exceeded expectations, and tix for all Teochew-language screenings were sold out.

Golden Village responded by adding another eight original-dialect screenings between June 25 and 29.

According to Golden Village, all 4,800 tickets for the additional screenings happening at their VivoCity branch were snapped up within about an hour of going on sale on June 22.

However, some moviegoers claim they never even got a chance to buy them.

Screenshots circulating on Reddit and shared with 8days.sg showed ticket-buyers in online queues with estimated waiting times ranging from one to two hours.

By the time some finally made it through, tickets had already sold out.

8days.sg reader Terence Tan shared with us his frustration with the online ticketing experience, saying Golden Village should have been better prepared for the overwhelming demand.

“The online queue was really laggy and slow,” he said.

“One moment it said the waiting time was 10 minutes. The next moment it became 12 minutes. It just kept getting pushed backwards when you thought it should be moving forward instead,” added Terence. There were also periods of time when the queue appeared to not be moving along.

Unfortunately, patience did not pay off for Terence. 

By the time he made it through, only a handful of scattered seats remained, and even those could not be successfully checked out.

Many others also aired their frustrations online.

"Is Golden Village the new Ticketmaster?” a netizen asked. Another wrote: “Why does it feel like I am queueing for BTS tickets again?”

The comparison comes just weeks after Singaporeans battled famously long queues and technical issues while trying to secure tickets for BTS’s concerts at the National Stadium on Dec 17, 19, 20, and 22.

A netizen even claimed they initially saw a short waiting time of just one minute for Dear You tickets.

"I got an estimated one min to enter at the start, but the website did not reload on its own. By the time I reload manually, it was two hours," they commented. 

Not everyone thought Golden Village deserved the criticism. Some felt the cinema operator was simply caught off guard by demand that few could have predicted.

"Don't blame GV, bro. At least they had the sense to bring the movie in,” said a netizen.

Others pointed to the broader issue of limited availability for dialect-language screenings in Singapore.

In a response to 8days.sg, a representative from Golden Village declined to comment on the complaints and stated they were aware of patrons who had successfully secured tickets online.

Directed and co-written by Lan Hongchun, Dear You follows two interconnected storylines spanning decades.

One timeline follows a grandson searching for his long-lost grandfather in present-day Thailand, while the other centres on a newly married man who leaves China for Southeast Asia in the 1940s in search of work.

The film has struck a chord with Teochew-speaking audiences and those interested in dialect cinema, many of whom have praised the opportunity to experience the movie in its original language.

The strong response has also reignited discussions about dialect film screenings in Singapore.

The Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) said it remains open to facilitating and supporting further Teochew screenings should the film’s distributor wish to apply for them, in response to audience interest.

According to CNA, Clover Films, the local distributor of Dear You, is seeking approval for up to 50 Teochew-language screenings after authorities indicated they would adopt a more flexible approach towards such requests.

“Following MDDI's statement earlier today, we have submitted our third request to seek IMDA's approval for up to 50 screenings of Dear You in Teochew over the coming weeks,” said Lim Teck, managing director of Clover Films.

Photos: Clover Films, Golden Village, icedtea027/Reddit