Filipino Time-Traveling Romance ‘Rewind’ Is Box Office Smash & Reminder Of Cinema’s Emotional Power — Global Breakouts

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.

This week, we go to the Philippines and take a look at a time-traveling romance film. Rewind has has become the highest-grossing Filipino film in history, with audiences lapping up the fantasy and mystical elements of a failing marriage given a second chance by divine intervention.

Name: Rewind
Country: The Philippines
Producer: ABS-CBN/Star Cinema, AgostoDos Pictures, APT Entertainment
International sales: Star Cinema
Distribution: Cinemas in Asia, Australia, Canada, U.S. (limited), Middle East
For fans of: A Change of Heart (Tanging Yaman), Classic Filipino family dramas

In Rewind, a divine intervention gives a second chance to a failing marriage between John (played by Dingdong Dantes) and Mary (Marian Rivera). Amid rising ticket prices, falling cinema-going numbers and the expansion of streaming in the Philippines, the romantic drama’s record-breaking success at the box office feels like an equally supernatural intervention.

At the end of January, we reported Rewind had become the first Filipino movie to cross $16M at the global box office, and the numbers keep growing. At last count this week, it had added another $500,000 to the bank. It has also broken local box office records and led to TikTok videos of fans weeping uncontrollably after viewing the movie. “I’m still trying to understand how that magic happened,” leading actor and executive producer Dantes tells Deadline. 

Produced with a budget over $1M, the Mae Cruz Alviar-directed film is now more than two months into its theatrical run in the Philippines, was released in Hong Kong on February 18 and debuts in Cambodia this Friday (March 8). Rewind has a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and has already opened in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Guam.

Kriz Gazmen, Managing Director of Philippines-based