We’re past the halfway mark of this decade, but we’re still fighting the same problem we were when theatres reopened during the latter years of Covid-19: people aren’t willing to shell out money for movies anymore. While films continue to be produced and shown in cinemas, audiences are still wary of supporting theatrical runs due to the rising cost of living and their perceived lack of quality. But in 2025, a few films stood out and made their mark.
In April 2025, veteran entertainment journalist Butch Francisco asked: “Is Philippine Cinema Dying?” The question, often posed and subsequently maligned, appeared in a time when audience attendance (and interest) in cinemas was supposedly waning. Francisco proceeded to outline various reasons for asking about cinema’s impending death knell: ticket prices have gone up, streaming has become a major player in Filipinos’ watching culture, piracy, etc. But he also answers his own question towards the end of the article: “It’s not in the pinkest of health, but it’s still around – what with film production outfits shelling out P13 to 15 million (€190 thousand to 219 thousand) per project [...] Cinema continues to evolve, after all. From celluloid, filmmakers have now gone digital. And from the habit of watching films in movie theatres, most film lovers are now into streaming service [sic].”
It’s always easy to ask, “Is Philippine cinema dying?” There are those who frequently think “Aantayin ko na lang sa Netflix” (“I’ll just wait for it on Netflix”), be it a Filipino or foreign film. Going to the cinema means shelling out for transportation and food, which would be even more daunting if you’re bringing a date or your entire family. Better to watch a movie at home, where it’s more convenient.
The highest-grossing film of the year, Call Me Mother, a comedy-drama starring two reliable box-office stars, Vice Ganda and Nadine Lustre, grossed a modest P392 million (€5 million) worldwide. Call Me Mother was screened during the annual Metro Manila Film Festival, a coveted lineup spot for Filipino movies, as the festival blocked all non-Filipino films (except those playing in premium formats like IMAX or ScreenX) for two weeks, concentrating the competition on the festival films themselves. The previous year, Vice Ganda’s MMFF entry, And the Breadwinner is…, earned P460 million (€6 million).
Even directors are taking notice and voicing their concerns about the slow uptick in cinema attendance. In January, Call Me Mother director Jun Robles Lana wrote a much-talked-about post regarding the MMFF on his Facebook account. He said, “For decades, the MMFF was the ‘people’s festival.’ It was the one time of year when ordinary workers took their children to the mall to see their idols. But today, a family of four would need at least P1,500 (around €21.5) just to enter the theatre, not including transportation or even a single bag of popcorn. By pricing the ordinary Filipino out of the theater, the industry hasn’t just lost customers, it has lost its soul. Cinema has shifted from a shared national culture to a middle-class privilege.”
This also comes at a time when the country’s own trade secretary says that a mere P500 (around €7.2) is enough for a family’s noche buena (Christmas feast), when it is far from the truth. So, as Lana asked, how can you expect a simple family to watch movies these days?
“You cannot promote a ‘National’ Film Festival while maintaining prices that exclude the nation,” he wrote. “Until we admit that cinema has become a luxury that the ‘500 Noche Buena’ family cannot afford, we are simply watching the slow, expensive sunset of Philippine cinema.”
Many agreed with Lana’s assessment of the festival. Even his film’s star, Vice Ganda, attributed the slump to economics: “The high ticket price is not the cause but an effect of the Filipino’s lack of purchasing power; they would be fortunate if they even have an income enough for their basic needs.”
MMFF is the only festival in the Philippines where all films are screened in commercial cinemas nationwide (not that we have many cinematheques). Since the festival runs during the Christmas season, the MMFF lineup is mostly made up of commercial or commercial-adjacent films aimed at a wide audience, with their “values” and “morals” focused on wholesome Filipino family fun.
In 2025, the festival line-up included the gritty political drama Manila’s Finest, starring one of the biggest actors of the Philippines, Piolo Pascual; Unmarry, a riveting annulment proceeding, and became one of the most talked about films of the festival; the return of the popular horror film franchise Shake, Rattle, and Roll (Filipinos love a good scare); a sequel to the viral hit film Bar Boys, which tackles the story of law students after they’ve graduated; Love You So Bad, featuring “actors” from the TV’s biggest reality hit show, Pinoy Big Brother; and the indie-leaning I’mPerfect, about the struggles and joys of two adults with down syndrome, played by actual actors with down syndrome.
Filmmakers and industry watchers had high hopes after the 2023 MMFF edition, which earned P1.069 billion (€15 million), but much of the gross was due to one film, Rewind, a marriage-and Jesus-centric film that’s appealing to the mostly Catholic population of the country. Since then, the following editions have failed to follow its footsteps. The 2025 edition is reportedly 100 million short of last year’s festival gross (around P800 million or €11 million), but the Metro Manila Development Authority, the government agency in charge of the festival, said that it’s the first time that seven of the entries surpassed the eight-digit mark in terms of sales. Progress is progress, perhaps.
Nevertheless, more filmmakers and producers took a chance at theatrical releases last year. A good example would be Antoinette Jadaone’s Sunshine, which took on Superman during its July 2025 release. It employed a structured marketing strategy to overcome the mammoth superhero flick on its way. The film tapped the very new film marketing and communications outfit, Lunchbox, to make noise. Apart from a coordinated PR run prior to the film’s release, Jadaone’s stars, led by popular actress Maris Racal, and the crew appeared after screenings for Q&A. This enabled the audience to learn more about the film, given its weighty subject of abortion and women’s rights, and to have some face time with Racal.
In the end, Sunshine rallied through. Word of mouth worked for the film. Supposedly, Sunshine would only have three cinemas on its second week, but they added more cinemas as the weeks went by, sold-out screenings generated more buzz, and social media posts induced FOMO and conversations. By the last week of August, it earned P$7 million (around €685,000).
The Sunshine case proved one thing that ABS-CBN Films Head Kriz Gazmen mentioned in an interview: a film has to be an event for viewers to ditch streaming and head to the theatres. As one of the biggest, if not the biggest, commercial film producers of the Philippines, the studio has slowed down, producing only five films in 2025. Yet it dominated the 2025 Filipino film box office, with the top three highest grossers under their wing Call Me Mother at P392 million (€5 million), the star-studded family drama Meet, Greet, and Bye at P260 million (€3.7 million), and the rom-com My Love will Make You Disappear at 173 million (€2.5 million). Granted, these are modest earnings. But Gazmen attests to a more calculated approach that ABS CBN Films has taken, since some very unfortunate events have happened involving its parent company, ABS CBN (its franchise was not renewed by the Philippine government, leading to its shutdown, with some saying it was a political move by Rodrigo Duterte’s administration in 2020).
Gazmen says that shelling out for only a few films is what their market can afford post-pandemic: “People have tightened their grips on their wallets. It’s difficult to spend. So now, we do everything that we can to make a movie an event. It’s an event that you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait for it on Netflix.’ Because everyone has watched it, you have to watch it. You also have to write your own essay on social media, post a photo of your ticket, and all that.”
For Star Cinema, their films need to have the following before they attempt to release them: (1) Actors that people are willing to buy a ticket for; (2) stories that will resonate to as large an audience as possible (perhaps even crossing over to the diaspora and Filipino overseas workers market; (3) an emotional experience that’s worthy of a cinematic runtime.
It seems it’s working for them so far, but not enough, if we consider their pre-pandemic sales, which could go from P400 million and up (though the highest-grossing Filipino film of all time was released in 2024, and a co-production with Star Cinema/ABS CBN Films).
Even controversies have helped films reach their audiences. In March 2025, Baby Ruth Villarama’s Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea was pulled out from the CinePanalo Film Festival. The film documents the tension in the West Philippine Sea, where China has been employing obstructive measures to dissuade fishermen, navy, and coast guard personnel protecting the contested waters (which the Philippines won in a landmark arbitration ruling in 2016 that China has not recognised yet). Villarama felt that there were some political and economic factors behind the pullout. In June 2026, the documentary premiered at DocEdge in New Zealand, where the Chinese consulate wanted it removed from the festival. It returned to the Philippines for limited, sold-out screenings in July and August, despite higher ticket prices.
It’s still expensive ticket prices that people mention when they’re asked why they don’t go to the cinemas these days (theatre productions, by contrast, have no problem selling out shows, but that’s another matter altogether). This is why Sunshine has worked with a mall for an exclusive contract with lower ticket prices which contribute to its success. We’ve seen people flock to cinemas when ticket prices are low, or even free (screenings of Studio Ghibli films even end up getting ticket scalpers). This was also discussed by lawmakers when the issue of sluggish MMFF sales was a topic on social media.
According to a report, the movie industry has yet to reach half its pre-Covid-19 pandemic earnings, according to the Cinema Exhibitors Association of the Philippines’ (CEAP) Bing Advincula.
“Before the pandemic, in 2019, the movie industry grossed around almost P13 billion (€189 million),” she said in a report. “So, when it came back in 2022, the gross was P4.5 billion. Then, 2023, P6.5 billion. In 2024, it’s P6.1 billion. Then 2025, P6.7 billion.”
Despite this, there have been some interesting releases in 2025. Even an expensive production, such as the final film in the Philippine history trilogy “Bayaniverse” (‘bayani’ being the Filipino word for ‘hero’), Quezon, still took a chance in connecting with the audience. The film opened in theatres in October 2025. It’s been seven years since Goyo: The Boy General (Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral), the last film of the trilogy, yet the filmmakers felt that they owed it to the audience to complete the Bayaniverse.
“To finish this Bayaniverse… it’s either an act of martyrdom or an act of absolute self-immolation,” said Film Development Council of the Philippines Chairman and CEO Jose Javier Reyes. “But I hope the younger generation of Filipino directors will see that there is a responsibility to the kind of films that we make. Being a filmmaker is more than just being a rock star. Being a filmmaker means coming up with statements which enrich and solidify the culture of our nation.”
Quezon reportedly earned P100 million (€1.4 million) at the box office, making it one of the top-grossing films of 2025. Similar to Sunshine, it used word of mouth (both pre-release and during its theatrical run) – a tactic that worked for the first film of the trilogy, Heneral Luna, in 2015 – PR blitz, and cinema visits to push the film into the audience’s consciousness.
Even TV shows such as the documentary series KMJS have staked their claim on the big screen through their wildly popular Halloween specials, directed by emerging and established filmmakers. In 2025, KMJS released Gabi ng Lagim: The Movie, following their Halloween anthology format. The film was released in late November and was picked up by Sony Pictures Releasing International for distribution.
Another interesting release was the documentary Eraserheads: Combo on the Run, an intimate chronicle of the Philippines’ biggest rock band. It has the distinction of becoming the first Philippine documentary to be mixed in Dolby Atmos. No box-office results have been released, but it’s being distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and is set for a North American theatrical release via Abramorama in 2026.
Actress and director Alessandra De Rossi also released the most interesting experiment of the year, Every Juan Knows Everyone, a comedy shot in one continuous take featuring, perhaps, all of the best actors and actresses in Philippine cinema and TV. It was co-produced by another commercial filmmaking giant, Viva Films, and was released in October 2025. No box-office results have been published
Speaking of Viva, they finally pushed through with their CineSilip, an erotica film festival that yielded an interesting crop of films. The film fest meant seeing erotica back again on the big screen, since the films of Viva’s erotica streaming service, VMX, hardly ever leave the platform. The big winner of the film festival is the hyperpop comedy-drama Dreamboi, about a trans woman’s obsession with an audio porn star.
In his Rolling Stone Philippines interview, Gazmen says how audiences have become more discerning, thanks to streaming services where they can watch films and shows of higher quality and production, which is perhaps why Filipino films are often derided for using the same formula/tropes over and over again (a problem of perception and accessibility, according to FDCP Chair Reyes).
“No matter how much star power you have, if the film is not good, your word of mouth is already wasted. It’s so difficult now because it’s a combination of so many factors: star power, storytelling, script. Especially these days, people are more adept at pointing out technical issues. Before, the average moviegoer didn’t even notice it. Now, people even take notice of the cinematography,” says Gazmen.
Discerning is right. Letterboxd has empowered younger audiences to become attuned to their cinephile selves, while social media has made film reviewers dime-a-dozen. Such audiences flock to local film festivals and special screenings to expand their cinematic horizons. Whether they subscribe to the promises of local commercial cinema is also a possibility. The fact that one of Cinemalaya Film Festival’s biggest hits, the lesbian drama Open Endings, plays out like an indie and queer version of a Star Cinema production.
But as FDCP chair Reyes noted in a survey, the current ticket pricing has eradicated the lower-income markets that used to frequent cinemas – something Lana also pointed out in his post. What used to be called the “bakya” (wooden clogs) crowd, or the mass audience, which loved formulaic melodrama and romance, is now prioritizing other things over spending money on a two-hour rom-com. Only classes A and B and a small portion of the C can afford to watch movies in theatres.
Speaking to an audience, Reyes made an appeal to Filipino viewers: “Let us be aware that if we want to bring back the life, and the vibrancy, and the significance of Filipino cinema, it’s not just the job of filmmakers… it’s the job of the audience. It all depends on the audience. If we won’t believe in the works of Filipino filmmakers, who will believe in us? It’s very important that we support important films or films that provide us with laughter and tears, if only for a few hours.”
Sources
tribune.net.ph
entertainment.inquirer.net
www.abs-cbn.com
www.facebook.com/rapplerdotcom
www.philstar.com
variety.com
Don Jaucian