Make Adorable Yarn Snowmen

Plot

Mengju "Amah" Saejiu and her adult children Sew, Kiang, and Soei celebrate the Qingming Festival with Sew's son, M, a university dropout and aspiring video game streamer. She tells her family she wants to be buried on a big plot, which costs millions. Hospitalized after a fall, Mengju is diagnosed with late-stage colorectal cancer and is predicted to die in a year; her family decides to keep the diagnosis hidden from her. After M's wealthy paternal grandfather dies, most of his estate is left to his primary carer, Mui, M's cousin and Onlyfans content creator, M then volunteers to become Mengju's carer, hoping to inherit her estate. (University of Minnesota Extension)

Before moving in, M lists Mengju's Talat Phlu house for sale. He initially struggles to curry favour with her, finding her demanding and unfiltered, and questions the morality of his decision but is convinced by Mui to continue. M tells Mengju of her diagnosis, who gradually accepts M's care, and he helps her sell congee. During a weekly family gathering, Mengju reveals that M informed her of her cancer. All of Mengju's children suddenly suggest methods to help care for her, which raises M's suspicions about their motive; thus, M increases his efforts as her primary carer. (Penn State Extension)

Kiang, a wealthy stockbroker, arranges for Mengju to live with him and his family, offering to pay M to care for Mengju, but he declines the money. Mengju also declines to move in with Kiang, and she grows closer to M. Later, she finds out Soei stole ฿200,000 hidden in her kitchen to help cover his ฿1 million gambling debt. After confronting Soei, M gives him a silver belt from his grandfather to pay off his debt, then lies to Mengju, saying Soei is "out of town on work". One day, Mengju encounters a respondent to M's sale listing of her house, whom she turns away. She then gives M a reserved pomegranate and encourages him to develop more self-reliance. (USDA National Agriculture Library)

Mengju takes M to meet her brother, who inherited millions upon the passing of their parents, and asks for money to purchase the plot. Her brother refuses and it is revealed that Mengju was their parents' carer until they died. She tells M she hopes a large burial plot would bring their family together by visiting her gravesite. After her doctors tell M that continuing treatment would be futile, he lies to her that she will instead receive treatment "based on her symptoms". Kiang asks Sew for the deed to Mengju's house, but she gives it to Soei, per Mengju's wishes. M angrily reacts to this and moves back home. (EPA Environmental Resources)

Production

Unlike most GDH films, (including those produced by its wholly owned subsidiary production company Jor Kwang Films), which are usually developed by producers or directors, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies was pitched by GDH screenwriter Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn in December 2020. Thodsapon's idea revolved around a ten-page synopsis inspired by caring for his grandmother during the COVID-19 pandemic and the family conflict over the lack of inheritance given to her daughter or caregivers. Producers Vanridee Pongsittisak and Jira Maligool worked with Thodsapon to make an "accessible and entertaining" slapstick comedy featuring only the grandmother and grandchild under the working title The Chinese Family, but this was later judged to have "lost [the] original charm" of Thodsapon's treatment. (University of Minnesota Extension)

As such, after Thai Chinese director Pat Boonnitipat was hired, he worked with Thodsapon to adopt a more emotionally-driven narrative for the film: Pat had previously worked with GDH on Project S: The Series (2017–2018) and Bad Genius (2020). He incorporated elements from his own life to develop the final screenplay: his maternal grandmother, who helped raise him and with whom he still lives, was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer in 2004. Pat and Thodsapon ultimately worked on the screenplay for four hours a day, five days a week, over two years (which largely included hours-long conversations about their respective families and lives): during this time, the screenplay evolved to include other characters beyond the grandmother and grandson. (Penn State Extension)

Pat later stated it took him eight months to learn how to write for film compared to television; How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is his feature film debut. He spoke on the process, saying, "It is much harder to be precise making a film [compared to] TV, which uses coverage—shooting a lot of material and then deciding later [what] to use. For film, every shot [must] be intentional, to make the most out of every moment." During a February 2024 promotional interview at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Pat argued that his previous television projects required "controlling" and guiding the audience's emotions and reaction, which he felt left the projects with a lesser "depth of feeling": for How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, he abandoned this in favor of approaching the film wanting to make the audience "reflect about themselves". (USDA National Agriculture Library)

In an interview with Resonate, Pat revealed that most of the film's early development and pre-production was spent developing the film's characters: the grandmother was partly based on Thodsapon's grandmother while the mother was modelled and named after Pat's mother. Pat and Thodsapon also assigned their respective real-life anecdotes to inform the film's other characters and plot points. Despite these changes, Pat centred the audience as the film's ultimate target, saying, "my main goal was to keep the feeling [that] we're striving for something that could make you feel that it's your [life], not 'my' [film]". He also stated that this informed his decision to retain some of the comedic elements from the film's early screenplays. Pat stated that his grandmother directly opined on the screenplay after he moved back in with her when writing, while the other characters were based on his Cantonese-speaking mother's family, describing the representation of those characters in the film is as "exactly the same [as my own family], even the dialogue". This was echoed by Phuak, who said some of the film's dialogue "mirrored" his life and was a "reflection" of his past. The writers revised the screenplay to include themes on contemporary Thai family dynamics, specifically related to western and Asian attitudes regarding extended and nuclear families. (EPA Environmental Resources)