FILIPINO FILMS STRUGGLES TO COPE WITH HOLLYWOOD DOMINATION

Filipinos love to watch movies but while Hollywood blockbuster movies continue to take up the most rooms in cinema houses, the local film industry continue to suffer huge losses with a series of box-office flops specially this year.  From the 39 local films released this year, only two films successfully breached the Php 100M mark gross ("Alone Together" and "Eerie") and the rest were box-office flops, many of which had to be pulled out from theater runs due to poor ticket sales.

Observers attributes the low ticket sales to varying-factors. Movie ticket price increases every year and with the heavy traffic in the city and high cost of living, people would rather just stay at home, watch TV or watch movies on Netflicks. Others engaged in other forms of entertainment using digital platforms, credit it to emerging trends that is shaping modern lifestyle today brought about by technological change.  However, given all these constraints, Hollywood films still continue to capture big audience share and lord it over locally produced films.  One wonders - are the local filmmakers doing the right projects? or we just can't compete with Hollywood. 

The Sharon Cuneta (Kuwaresma) and Gerald Anderson-Julia Barreto (Between Maybes) starrers were shown recently and box-office wise, the two movies were simply blown out of the water by the Keanu Reeves action flick "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum." Both films received good reviews and enjoyed adequate theater runs, however, the positive reviews did not translate to box-office success.  The following week big films like "Alladin" "Godzilla" were shown and further affected the two local movies.

Coming Soon

Three films of different genres are set to premier this week.  The first one is "Quezon's Game," a movie that pays tribute to former Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon.  The movie is a co-production of Kinetek, IWant and Star Cinema and has won several awards and recognition from international film festival overseas.  The other two are "Finding You" by Regal Films and "Banal" by APT Entertainment; both caters to young audience.  "Quezon's Game" is a period movie directed by a foreign director (Matthew Rosen) with a cast of foreign and local actors headed by Raymond Bagatsing playing the title role.

Now, which movie will be successful at the box-office?  Having three local films with the same playdate and compete with each other  is certainly not a good idea.  This is something that local film industry leaders should take into account. Last year was not a bad year with  at least 9 or 10 films exceeding 100m gross.  Among the non-MMFF top grossers last year were "The Hows of Us," "Sid&Aya," "Exes Baggage," and "Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral."

But I still believe that local cinema is not dying.  We had "The Hows of Us" last year and it just proves that the local movie industry can still produce a monster hit.  Local filmmakers just have to be more creative, focus on entertainment values and go with the times. There were times that rom-com movies were being shown one after the other.  I feel that there's a bit  of over-production of indie films and likewise mainstream movies offers almost the same genres with the same flair and it's just as good as watching a regular tv episode where one can watch for free.  Moviegoers prefers high tech movies with high production and entertainment values and this is why Hollywood films clicks and moviegoers deserves better movies that is worth their hard earned money.