Less than a fortnight after announcing its new offerings of Outdoor Channel, Media Prima’s OTT service, tonton, will be releasing its first ‘tonton original movie’, By MY Side on the Silver Screen starting Malaysia Day.
The movie is a coming-of- age story of Faye (Marianne Tan of the Ola Bola fame) who is about to embark on a new life journey – going to college – with her first love Ben (played by Brandon Ho), only to find him planning to leave the country to study overseas.
The movie is expected to be received well especially by millennials as the entire plot revolves on the typical day-to- day experiences of a college student who must figure out how to save her relationship with Ben or deal with the expected long distance romance and cope with being alone.
Airin Zainul, Director of tonton & Licensing and Merchandising, Media Prima Television Networks (NPTN) said the movie release is very exciting as it is the first tonton original to be rolled out since the service was launched last year.
“tonton has made great progress over the past year plus. We have given tonton a new lease of life with its many packages, then we beefed up its library to more than 100,000 hours. Since then we have introduced tonton into Singapore and Brunei. Now it is its own movie!” shared Airin adding that in Q4 FY2017, her team targets to launch tonton into one more regional country.
What is also exciting, added Airin, is the potential reach of the movie itself. “What is unique about this movie is that it was produced in collaboration with YouTube sensation JinnyboyTV and also features cameo appearances of Malaysian YouTube stars such as Jared Lim, Ernest Ng, Dennis Yin, Shawn Lee, Joseph Germani, Jenn Chia, Luqman Podolski, Mark O’dea and tonton’s Chinese ambassadors, Thomas and Jack.
Supporting cast includes Nadia Nash, Arwind Kumar, Adam Shamil, Maggy Wong and Josephine Yap.
“Combined, they have total reach on IG (687,000), FB (604,000) and on YouTube itself 879,000. We at tonton are understandably excited about the potential of this 75-minute movie with a storyline that infuses contemporary culture with timeless traditions in a multi-ethnic setting,” said Airin.
BY MY Side had always been meant to be for tonton but there had always been allocation of further distribution of the movie even when tonton first approached JinnyboyTV for the collaboration.
“We conducted the movie promotion at college campuses last week and with the extremely warm reception, we knew a cinema theatre stint will do justice to the film. If with previous movies, tonton is the last to get to feature it, this time around, tonton is expected to get to feature By MY Side immediately after its cinema schedule. What’s more, during the time the movie is featured in the cinemas, tontoners will get exclusive look at behind the scenes footages, previews, the making-of video and loads of other goodies only available exclusively on tonton,” said Airin.
During the Campus Tours mentioned earlier, there were social media and digital content knowledge sharing session by JinnyboyTV founders Jin Lim and Reuben Kang, a ten-minute movie preview session and a meet & greet session with the cast.
“Another plus about this movie going to the cinemas is the additional revenue channel as well as additional activation touch points to go on-ground and reach out to different sets of audiences – those who may never or have never consumed content through tonton before,” explained Airin.
The movie premieres at local TGV cinemas nationwide on 16 September 2017 after a Gala Premiere the evening before. Audiences will also get to view the movies in selected TGV outlets.
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