Philippines: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: As she looks to expand from theater into film and television, writer, director, and actress Sara Porkalob has signed with Impression Entertainment for management.

EXCLUSIVE: UK co-production outfit Big Safari Productions and financier Creativity Capital have appointed former Odin’s Eye Entertainment exec Tianna Roberts as Acquisitions and Co-Productions Manager at Big Safari and Acquisitions Manager at Creativity Capital.

Naman Ramachandran Dua Lipa is on the Asia leg of her “Radical Optimism” tour, and the singer-songwriter is teasing fresh elements for her devoted fanbase across the continent. The Asia tour kicked off in Singapore and continued across Philippines, Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia, with India and South Korea to come. After incorporating Jane Fonda-inspired workout routines into her Singapore performances, Lipa remains coy about what else she has planned for the remainder of the tour.

As Alternativa Film Project heads into its second year, the annual event will launch its first ever film festival to run alongside its awards ceremony. The festival, which takes place this year in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta and runs from November 22-28, will host screenings of nominated films from Southeast Asia before wrapping up with its Alternativa Film Awards ceremony on November 29.

Naman Ramachandran ABS-CBN Films and GMA Pictures’ romantic drama “Hello, Love, Again” achieved a milestone opening weekend of $2.4 million across North America, setting a new record for Philippines cinema in the territory. The sequel to 2019’s “Hello, Love, Goodbye” surpassed expectations, with its opening weekend earnings already exceeding the entire North American run of its predecessor, which earned $1.99 million. Released by Abramorama in partnership with AJMC, the film secured the widest release ever for a Filipino production, playing in 248 locations across the U.S.

Sahasranaman Ramachandran editor Taiwan production house Aview Images has struck a partnership with Singapore’s Momo Film Co to co-produce two upcoming features – Nelson Yeo‘s “The Drought” and Daniel Hui‘s “Other People’s Dreams.” “The Drought,” Yeo’s sophomore feature, explores family dynamics and personal struggles against the backdrop of an uninhabitable drought. The project marks a reunion between Yeo and Momo Film Co following his debut “Dreaming & Dying,” which won the Golden Leopard – Filmmaker of the Present and Best First Feature at Locarno 2023.

QCinema Project Market (QPM) wrapped this weekend with an awards ceremony in which cash prizes and in-kind services worth $442,000 were handed out to projects from the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After a strategic launch in Japan in September and an end-of October debut in the much smaller New Zealand market, Warner Bros, Discovery’s Max streaming platform gets a much bigger rollout in seven more East Asian territories from Tuesday. “Asia Pacific is probably our single biggest region in terms of opportunity for growth, largely because of Max,” JB Perrette, president of streaming at WBD tells Variety. In five Southeast Asian territories (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan, Max will be switched on in place of a low-tech stopgap service HBO Go. That predecessor has operated since 2010 and was long ago technologically superseded both by rival services and by WBD’s own Max. Max, which emerged from the 2022 combination of Warner Bros., with its historic movie studio and its HBO pay-TV service, and Discovery with its software architecture and a vault of unscripted programming, began operating in the U.S.

Hello, Love, Again, the widest domestic release for a Filipino film, now holds a record for the highest opening weekend for the same with $2.4 million and a no. 8 spot.

Naman Ramachandran The QCinema Project Market, the industry platform of the Philippines‘ QCinema International Film Festival, wrapped its second edition with grants and co-production support distributed across multiple projects from the region. Three Filipino projects secured the market’s top Philippine Co-Production Grant of $34,000 each: Martika Ramirez Escobar’s “Anak Alon” (Daughters of the Sea), Eve Baswel’s “Bato Bato Sa Langit, Ang Tamaan Magagalit” (Heaven Help Us), and Sonny Calvento’s “Inahing Baka” (Mother Maybe). The Myanmar-Indonesia co-production “The Beer Girl in Yangon,” helmed by Sein Lyan Tun, scored the Southeast Asia Co-Production Grant worth $17,000.

The Philippines’ QCinema Project Market (QPM) handed out $442,000 (PHP26M) in grants and co-production support at its closing ceremony on November 16. 

Partners Sideshow Pictures and Janus Films open All We Imagine As Light and will follow the playbook for Drive My Car, the indie distributor’s first film that began a slow rollout about this time in 2021, collecting awards, nice grosses and finishing with a Best International Picture Oscar win amid a flurry of nominations. Kapadia’s film, among the best reviewed of the year, was snubbed by India for an Oscar selection. Its distributor has something to say about that and is campaigning for other key categories.

Naman Ramachandran Vietnam talent showed strong presence at the 12th QCinema International Film Festival in Quezon City, Philippines, as Trương Minh Quý’s “Viet and Nam” claimed the top prize, while compatriot Dương Diệu Linh’s “Don’t Cry, Butterfly” secured the Grand Jury Prize. “Viet and Nam,” which made its debut in Cannes Un Certain Regard, emerged victorious in the Asian Next Wave competition.

Taiwanese animated feature Clouded Leopard, to be written and directed by Chi Po-chou and produced by Mangowork Studio, was presented with the TAICCA X CNC Award at the close of Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) on Friday.

Brillante Mendoza and the directorial debut of New York Asian Film Festival director Samuel Jamier adorn the 2025 production slate of Philippines label Fire and Ice Media. The company is headed by Liza Diño-Seguerra, a former actor and previous head of the Film Development Council of the Philippines. The company’s recent collaborations include a minority stake in Nicole Midori Woodford’s “Last Shadow at First Light” (a collaborative project spanning Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Slovenia) that premiered at the San Sebastian festival, and co-production “Blue Imagine,” by Urara Matsubayashi which had its world premiere at the Rotterdam festival.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Recent Asian feature films including Makbul Mubarak’s “Autobiography,” Lan Pham Ngoc’s “Cu Li Never Cries,” Nelson Yeo’s “Dreaming & Dying,” Jeremias Nyangoen’s “The Women of Rote Island” and Lyda Leak’s “The Night Curse of Reatrei” adorn the non-competitive lineup of the 2024 edition of the Blue Chair film festival in Luang Prabang, Laos. Previously known as the Luang Prabang Film Festival, the festival counts 24 features and 40 shorts in its 2024 festival. It will run Dec.

Getting a haircut can be an enjoyable and thrilling experience.

Content agencies from Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines presented their incentives and co-production initiatives at Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) on Thursday. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Governments and agencies across Asia are taking steps to expand and extend the cross-border film coproduction movement. A seminar called ‘From Eurasia to Global Collaboration’ on Thursday, the third day of the Taiwan Creative Content Fest, represented a handy recap of funding and structural developments from four countries: The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey. Alex Sihar, from Indonesia’s directorate of culture, part of the ministry of education, described an ongoing process intended to put the industry on a more professional footing. “While we have a long history of filmmaking and a very diverse culture, our films until recently have had very little international exposure, there has been little knowledge transfer and no incentives for location shooting or co-production.” Film policy was previously stretched across multiple ministries, but is now to be overseen by a film department under the education ministry, which is newly separated from educational matters.Co-productions are to be further encouraged and the country’s matching fund (which doubles up on funding available from the likes of the World Cinema Fund, TAICCA and Purin Pictures) is likely to be expanded. Indonesia is also a founder member of the Asian Film Alliance Network (AFAN, alongside Mongolia, Singapore, Taiwan, The Philippines, South Korea and Malaysia). Marylo Christine H.

Naman Ramachandran Philippines filmmaker Joel Ruiz and producer Maria Madonna Tarrayo are pitching their anthology series “Love at 310” at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF), bringing an intimate look at relationships through stories set in a Manila love motel. “All the stories in ‘Love at 310’ are inspired by real stories from people in my life,” says Ruiz, whose previous film “How She Left Me” topped Netflix charts. “What happens between couples when they are naked, when they are completely vulnerable, when there is nowhere to hide?” The series aims to break new ground in addressing sexuality in Asian media.

EXCLUSIVE: Indonesian horror film Dominion of Darkness has sold to 53 territories, including Taiwan (MovieCloud), Vietnam (Noori), Thailand (Shinesaeng Ad.Venture), the Philippines (Pioneer), Latin America (Mundo) and Russia (The World Pictures).