Ambitious, challenging, and groundbreaking. These are perfect recipes for the major film comeback of an icon.
We’re talking about Bossing Vic Sotto, who is slated for a box-office return at the very timely 50th anniversary of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF). Well, we’ve heard of this project quite a while back, and it did excite us a lot to learn about the dream casting and groundbreaking storyline. Which we cannot share just yet. But here is what we could share so far.
“The Kingdom” is the title of the film, and it is a tripartite partnership between powerhouse producers MQuest Ventures, which gave us “GomBurZa,” APT Entertainment, which partly gave us last year’s “Rewind” and so much more over the past years, and Bossing’s MZet Television Productions, Inc., which will dabble in the film as well as have Bossing star in it alongside Piolo Pascual. Papa P! It is casting gold.
As Bossing told us during our visit while he was on standby for “Eat, Bulaga,” “This is not comedy. I have never done anything like this before.”
“Actually, we have never even heard this kind of storyline before, but we’ll save that for another time,” he added.
Bossing shared why he said yes to the film. “Kaya ko tinanggap itong pelikula na ito kasi na challenge ako, eh. Most of my films are challenging. I started with ‘Lastikman’ which had a lot of action and comedy, and special effects,” he said.
“Then the ‘Enteng Kabisote’ series because of the story and then there are a lot of factors. But this time, after five long years na pahinga at inabot ng pandemya at bumabalik na ngayon mga pelikula, I wanted something different.
“Kakaiba naman! Tapos na ako sa mga ‘Enteng Kabisote,’ mga comedy. When this project was presented to me, it was super challenging,” he continued.
From the grapevine, we heard that it has an unlimited budget because the goal here is also to help with nation-building. When we spoke to MQuest Ventures president and CEO Jane Basas, she shared a bit about “The Kingdom.”
“It is our ambition of how big we want it to be. How beautiful (do) we want it to be. Kasi mahirap ang plot ng storya because it’s a setting of monarchy in the Philippines that has never been colonized,” she said. “So, we’re going to create a world. We’re going to build the world.”
Building a world from scratch is indeed ambitious, but it is essential for the story to thrive.
Basas added that the pieces of the puzzle just fell into place when APT CEO, direk Mike Tuviera, pitched the five-year dream to her during the “Padyak Princess” story conference months ago.
“Direk Mike really had Bossing Vic Sotto in mind, and the film would not happen if he said no,” she said.
It was an added bonus that “The Kingdom” was the fifth film that was announced at the MMFF 50 media conference just this week.
“It was an added bonus,” said Bossing, who was busy at a pictorial when he received the good news.
“I came from one of my endorsements, and I got a message from APT’s Jojo O’Conner saying, ‘Pasok tayo!’ Sabi ko, ‘Ah, ganon ba? Ayos,’” he said.
“The Kingdom” also serves as direk Mike’s return to directing.
“It’s going to be epic. It’s going to be very dramatic. Feeling namin akmang akma siya sa panahon at sa okasyon.”
More than the entertainment industry being given service by the soon-to-be masterpiece that has already started production, Bossing Vic also said that it will be a moving story for the Filipinos.
“The story in the concept is really different. Nothing like we’ve seen before. For me, this will serve as an eye-opener for all the Filipinos para sa atin mga kababayan at sa Pilipinas,” he said.
Catch “The Kingdom” in December as an official entry at the Metro Manila Film Festival’s 50th anniversary.