Filipino Cinema : A Dying Art

Spider-Man: Brand New Day? has recorded over P1-billion gross in the Philippines, just 12 days after it premiered on July 29, in comparison, Rewind (2023),which is the highest grossing mmff films over the past decade only gathered 889 million all throughout their theatrical run, so this begs the question, what's wrong with Filipino cinema in general and why don't we love our cinema as much as we love foreign films? Does it feel like it's not worth your money? Is Philippine cinema dead?

There is no denying that there's an underlying problem when it comes to Filipino box office and like any other problems there are root causes of this problem, so I have decided to list the things That I think these problems stem from boils down to four major root causes which are Production, Audience, Actors, Economy.

Production

As Ryan Gosling stated in the 2026 screening of Project Hail Mary , "not your job to keep [theaters] open, it's our job to make things that makes it worth coming out". Films todays, particularly mainstream, just doesn't feel the way its used to, it felt cheap and feels like it's sole purpose was just to get money out of your pocket, if it's not about a cliche love story with a plot that you read and watched a thousand times before it is a cheaply made comedy with mediocre special effects and cgi, this might make some money however people will eventually get tired of things like this as it goes over time. It is actually unbelievable because we used to have absolute cinema bangers with great directors such as Erik Matti, Lav Diaz, Brilliante Mendoza, Mikhael Red and if we go back decades earlier, Ishmael Bernal and Lino Brocka heavily influenced "Parasite" director Bon Joon Ho in his movies, and I can go on and on.. These directors in terms of talent can go toe to toe with the best foreign directors in the world, in the likes of the Nolan's and the scorsese's and yet we are very unaware the talent we Filipinos possesses and the reason for this is majority of the Filipinos hate good films,which comes to the next root of the problem, The Audience.

The Audience

It's not a very bold claim to say that Filipino audiences hate good movies. This is proven by the fact that most mmff entries are objectively not good movies, are they entertaining to some degree? sure, but are they watching in theatres for An average Filipino? Personally I don't think so, and this is supposed to be the best of the best movies to come out in the year and yet cinemalaya which is composed of niche independent filmmakers has many better movies with very little budget.

"Celebrities" not "ACTORS"

Legendary actor Michael Caine once said, "A good actor can make a bad script looks good, but a bad actor can make a good script look like a disaster" which is nothing but facts. We have a lot of very talented actors but the problem is that we don't cast them near enough as we should, instead we opt to choose celebrities with stoic acting instead actors who can actually act. It's very easy to see when an actor really puts in the work to deliver a performance but we rarely see that nowadays, like the art of acting itself is already dead Having a pretty face can't carry a movie itself nor make the movie better. At the end of the day it's about having actors blend well with the characters that they are playing.

Economy

In early 2025 Director Jun Lana blames expensive cinema tickets for lack of MFF support and stated that "For a family of four it will take at least ?1,500 just to enter the theater, not including transportation or even a single bag of popcorn" which might not sound like a lot to some but for an average Filipino family is a lot for a movie. The supposed to be a weekly habit the masses have now become a luxury for An ordinary citizen. Given the rise of streaming services all over the internet and some are free to watch, we really can't blame the Filipinos for not going to the big screens anymore.

Filipino Cinema is not yet dead; however it's a dying art that requires immediate attention. The question is what can we do? Maybe we should start supporting and watching great movies so they don't stop making them and feel free to give fair criticism that will actually help in making a better movie, support better actors, support better directors, we can start making a change doing these small things.