We’re already halfway through 2017 and with the year at its midpoint, it’s high time to look back at the previous six months of the cinematic calendar. The pride of the passing year continued in 2017 as fresh and fiercer films took over the limelight. A few of them made money and some of them did not.
The pop
My Ex and Whys
From its star-studded cast, cliché plot and Pinoy humor, the hugot-filled film hooked a massive viewership that earned the LizQuen-topbilled movie a whooping P341 movie on its closing week making it the biggest local film of the year. The film, like everyone knows, is the love team’s most successful movie to date. My Ex and Whys hit P31.5 million on its opening day, and the figure increased to P100 million three days later. Another milestone was made as the film crossed over the P200-million-mark in just 13 days.
Can’t Help Falling In Love
KathNiel reestablished itself as one of the country’s most prominent love teams with this blockbuster film from Star Cinema. Can’t Help Falling in Love raked in P33 million for its opening day, making it the highest-earning opening Black Saturday Filipino film to date. On its 13th day, the film grossed P200 million locally, and on its 24th day at the commercial theaters, the film grossed P300 million.
Can We Still be Friends?
The highly-anticipated sophomore film of Gerald Anderson and Arci Muñoz started strong at the tills with a 7-million-peso opening gross. Can We Still be Friends? paraded the love team’s chemistry with its quirky plot and a question that brought viewers together: “Can exes really be friends?” Although no official box office figures were released after it’s opening day, the film is one of the films this year that made more money, including Our Mighty Yay, that made a killing at the box office during its first week of commercial release.
The flop
Extra Service
The story revolves on the amazing adventures of Aw (Arci Muñoz), Em (Coleen Garcia) and Gee (Jessy Mendiola), who are mild-mannered massage therapists by day and fierce secret agents who solve crimes by night. They are then tasked to embark on a top-level secret mission to retrieve the precious “Perlas Ng Silangan” in exchange for their lives and freedom. But this plot didn’t make much of an impression as the film only managed to earn P28 million, a figure that failed to impress even the big bosses of Sklylights and Star Cinema.
Northern Lights: A Journey to Love-Northern Lights
Like the aurelia borealis that the film failed to show, its box office performance missed the list of the best performing films in terms of box office gross. The collaboration film Star Cinema and Regal Films was a big production but it only earned…gasp… P200,000. So, what happened to Piolo Pascual’s star power?
Luck at First Sight
The failure of Jericho Rosales and Bella Padilla’s film is somehow surprising. With the success of their individual films Walang Forever and Camp Sawi, it was expected that the film would make it well at the tills but its box office figures say otherwise. Oh, we stand corrected! No figures were released. Perhaps, Viva Films was too embarrassed to even announce the film’s box office failure.