Chapter 9 - One more second chance: love team longevity and utility in the era of the television studio

Summary

On 25 November 2015, A Second Chance (Cathy Garcia Molina) was released by Philippine production company Star Cinema. The film broke Filipino box office records, earning figures that redefined previously accepted ideas of success in contemporary popular Philippine cinema. In 2019, it was the sixth highest grossing Filipino film of all time at PHP556 million (US$11.7 million) and one of only seven local films to gross more than half a billion pesos. The love team films of John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo have been perennial tent poles for ABS-CBN since 2002, working together in seven teleserye (television series) and eight films. The pair are a product of the modern television studio and yet they also hark back to the love teams of the past in Philippine cinema in their construction.

Mainstream filmmaking in the Philippines was dominated by the television studio ABS-CBN, a sprawling multimedia conglomerate owned by the Lopez family. It has multiple arms within the entertainment industry including television channels such as ABS-CBN 2, mainstream and ‘maindie’ filmmaking companies in Star Cinema and Skylight Films respectively, the Star Studio magazine, DZMM-AM, a radio station, and even the means to transmit internationally via their global subscription television network, The Filipino Channel. ABS-CBN took over the creation of stars and films from the more traditional film studios of the past, dominating the industry from the 1990s onwards. This chapter will examine the studio's chief export of love teams and romance films, particularly the marketing and management of the popular long-term Cruz–Alonzo love team. With a shared history of nineteen years together, their love team is particularly successful with a unique nostalgia and evolution shared with the audience. It explores how the television studio utilises love teams, and how this compares historically to prior Philippine studios. It considers how the love team is marketed through social media, particularly Instagram, and examines how A Second Chance and its publicity is informed by the history and longevity of the Cruz–Alonzo love team.

The role of the studio and its employees in shaping and marketing the love team image, and how that role has evolved to embrace the new possibilities offered by social media, illustrate an evolving empire that employs both the traditional tactics of 1950s Philippine studios as well as contemporary marketing strategies.