ABS-CBN's New DARNA Movie in Development

Angel Locsin's first run as Darna on GMA's 2005 TV series of the same title

ABS-CBN and star cinema has recently confirmed that they are indeed developing a new "Darna" movie with Erik Matti as director and Angel Locsin to reprise her role as the Filipina superheroine. Last April 2013, the property rights to Darna and along with 12 other Mars Ravelo properties have gone into ABS-CBN's wing. ABS-CBN immediately launched their recent Dyesebel TV series and have since been developing a Darna movie. [hit the jump to continue]

This movie will mark the return of Angel Locsin to the role of Darna. The GMA Network had their "Darna" TV series in 2005 with Angel Locsin as the title role. In an interview with ABS-CBN news, Angel Locsin promises that this project is daring, and is very big and gigantic in scale for a Philippine superhero movie. Locsin expressed confidence that the film will elevate standards in local filmmaking, saying it is something Filipinos can be proud of on the global stage.

The rest of the other cast have not yet been announced, but the rumor mill lists Angel Aquino, Jake Cuenca, Joem Bascon, and Bangs Garcia for the other roles.

Inasmuch as I would like that to be true, and would want to happily jump on the positive excitement, I have my own reservations, simply because they all say that ("this is going to be big"). I am also afraid because this is such a humongous project by a very mainstream film company and surely, there will be producers and meddlers who will probably inject their own awful contributions to the picture. Plus, I personally have never loved Erik Matti's style in terms of fantasy and genre films. Matti also directed Pedro Penduko 2 (2000), Gagamboy (2004), and Exodus: Tales from the Enchanted Kingdom (2005), which all had heavy doses of campy awfulness.

The silver lining here is that we can hope that we will see the Erik Matti we saw when he made "On The Job". I mean the level of originality and dynamic style, un-bothered by mainstream adulterations. The silver lining is that he will make a Darna movie that is worth being embedded in the classics of Pinoy genre cinema.
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