Darna, liliparin ang bulkan? Stunning VFX reel surfaces online
MANILA – Darna flew towards an erupting volcano in a 2015 teaser shown during that year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) – a short scene hawk-eyed fans of the “komiks” icon recognized in a stunning visual effects reel that has surfaced online.
On video-sharing site Vimeo, visual effects company Mothership recently uploaded a compilation of recent works, showing the breakdown of effects as seen in films like “Kung Fu Divas” (2013) and “Kubot: The Aswang Chronicles 2” (2014).
The same four-minute video was shared on Facebook by animation pages VFX Productions and CGchannel. As it circulated online, some fans of “Darna” thought familiar the reel’s middle portion.
It shows residents fleeing from a city apparently battered by war, a crowd panicking because of an erupting volcano, and a mysterious woman in an outfit resembling Darna’s running towards the catastrophe.
These same scenes, “Darna” fans observed, were in the 2015 MMFF teaser for the Erik Matti-helmed film. While Mothership did not specify that part of the reel as being from “Darna”, the company’s official Facebook page has a logo on its cover photo that’s identical to the “Darna” logo seen on official ABS-CBN merchandise. ABS-CBN’s film arm, Star Cinema, is co-producing the new film alongside Matti’s Reality Entertainment.
Mothership has also previously provided visual or post-processing effects for Matti films, like the aforementioned “Kubot” and its first installment, “Tiktik,” as well as “On The Job”.
Taking these clues, numerous fan pages dedicated to “Darna” have since re-uploaded a cut version of the video, explicitly identifying the middle portion of the reel as being from the upcoming movie.
At the time the 2015 teaser was released, it wasn’t yet clear if Angel Locsin would reprise the titular role; hence the hooded figure. It was in May 2017 when producer Star Cinema finally confirmed Locsin would no longer play Darna due to a back injury. Two months later, Liza Soberano was announced to be the film’s new lead.
Matti, in a June 2016 interview, cited the uncertainty surrounding the role that prompted producer Star Cinema to get a teaser out, “so that everyone will be assured na matuloy ang Darna, kahit na ganoon ang nangyari kay Angel.”
Since then, no new material has been released of the film.
In an interview aired on “Rated K” last Sunday, Soberano explained why developments on the project have been kept under tight wraps: “It’s such a big project that we want to be able to tape everything we can until it’s actually out there.”
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