A Phnom Penh-set reworking of Kwon Hyung-jin’s 2010 South Korean drama Wedding Dress is the lead title for Malaysia’s Abnormal Studios at this year’s Asian Contents & Film Market in Busan, where the company is selling the film ahead of its local release.
The new version centres on Dalin, a single mother who designs bridal gowns and whose devotion to her job has opened a gap between her and her 10-year-old daughter Mina. A terminal diagnosis shifts her priorities, and she sets about readying everything she thinks the girl will need for a happy life once she has died.
The Cambodian adaptation is the first feature from Huang Han, whose earlier work has screened at the Berlin, Busan and Pingyao film festivals. It keeps the core of the mother-daughter story while anchoring it in the day-to-day life and emotional textures of the region.
The remake reflects a wider trend of Korean stories being reimagined for Southeast Asian audiences, with familiar family dramas reshaped through local settings, languages and cultural rhythms. For Abnormal Studios, the film is also the centrepiece of a Busan slate spanning horror, romance, science fiction and regional genre cinema.
Also on the slate is The Hungry One, Venezuelan horror director Alejandro Hidalgo’s upcoming feature. The story follows Emily, a white American woman whose Chinese husband takes her to visit his relatives’ ancestral home in Malaysia over the 15-day Hungry Ghost Festival, when the boundary with the underworld is lifted and ghosts wander among the living.
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Abnormal Studios is also handling Ali & Ben’s Spicy Meats, an independent cannibal black comedy-horror from Feisal and Iskander Azizuddin, and Malaysian sci-fi fantasy Mimpi Kita: Castle in the Air.
The company’s wider pan-Asian lineup includes Because of You Ka Kui, a film celebrating Canto rock frontman Wong Ka Kui; Hong Kong drama Next Stop, Somewhere; Cambodian rom-com Far Away Close to You; and The Ghost of Banana Tree, adapted from a well-known Cambodian folk horror legend.
Abnormal Studios, a subsidiary of Westec Media Limited, has been acquiring and releasing films since 2020 and has handled more than 400 titles to date. It now releases around 100 films a year across Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Mongolia and Nepal.
