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Remember when director-producer Erik Matti made showbiz headlines because of his comment about South Korean dramas in 2020?

In a Twitter post, Direk Erik shared his observation about how South Korean series were dominating a popular streaming app especially during the pandemic. It did not sit well to many Pinoys, who thought that the On The Job director was unsupportive of local productions.

In a recent interview with Direk Erik, we asked him about this issue and it seemed that he still remembers it very well.

He smiled and said, "Ang hirap sa tweet kasi hindi mo ma-explain ang context mo. Ang context ko lang naman do'n when I posted that, you can see all these polished, super glossy, Korean products. How can we compete with those, di ba? Pero hindi siya lait."

The director clarified that it was actually a challenge for local producers like them to keep with the changes in the international scene. In fact, this has become his personal challenge for his team in Reality MM Studios.

"Challenge siya for us," Direk Erik told GMANetwork.com and other select media in a pocket interview held recently.

"If that's the competition worldwide--there's the Koreans, the Hollywood--we need to step up, di ba? I think that's also what we're trying to prove with the projects that we're working on.

'Aside from studying and exploring the possibility of doing not just Filipino stories, but Filipino stories merged with other territories. Like, yung London namin na project, it's a Filipino story that will work with the London scenario. A Filipino story that starts out in New York... Alam mo 'yon, you're finding out ways by which to tell a Filipino story in a much bigger world para it allows us bigger stories--mas layered, mas iba ang dynamics kasi may foreign components."

Aside from featuring Filipino stories in international projects, Reality MM Studios will also be working of local adaptations of foreign projects, some are for international streaming companies.

"We were looking into the changes that happened sa pandemya. Nag-iba yung landscape natin, nag-iba yung cinema setup natin, nag-iba yung showbiz, di ba? So kami rin, feeling namin kailangan naming mag-evolve. Kailangan namin to look into a future that may be different from how we thought of it before the pandemic. Right after On The Job, we started getting a lot of interests from international streamers," said Direk Erik.

This is one of the reasons Reality MM Studios tapped five new directors to helm several projects they have acquired.

Direk Erik said, "I think more than just me doing the projects, it's about time that we start bringing the Filipino talent out there in the global stage. We are looking at all these directors who are like-minded--parang nagma-match-match naman kami sa mga gusto namin at ayaw naming mga pelikula. So, we brought together these five filmmakers to help us into the future of cinema, of content. Right now, Reality MM is doing projects for HBO, Netflix, and even Disney. [We're also] developing projects for international companies.

"Rather than tightening our belts after the pandemic, we feel that now is the right time to push it further, to do more ambitious work, para makita mo talaga na bumubuhay talaga (ang) industriya. Siyempre, ayaw natin na parang relax-relax lang."

Among these directors are Joey De Guzman, Kerwin Go, Siege Ledesma, Dean Macial, and Kip Oebanda.

Joey is a young filmmaker born in the Philippines and raised in New Zealand. After finishing his Master's Degree in Design (Auckland University of Technology) and gaining work experience while chipping away on weekend passion projects, Joey made the move back to his home country in 2016. His goal, to rediscover his cultural roots and chase his filmmaking dreams.

Kerwin is a director/cinematographer based in Manila, Philippines. After attending Los Angeles Film School, he wrote and directed Eskrimadors: A Filipino Martial Arts Documentary, which was a nominee for Best Documentary in the Gawad Urian Film Awards 2010. He served as Director/Writer/Cameraman for Asian Air Safari, an aviation and travel show on Asian News Channel, Cinematographer for Melodrama Negra (audience choice award Cinema One Originals Film Festival 2012), Tuhog (2013) and Dear Other Self (2017).

Siege used to work in call center industry before she took a leap of faith in 2012, and enrolled in a one-year Motion Picture Production course at the Asia Pacific Film Institute. Her thesis film and first directorial feature, SHIFT (2013) won Best Picture at the 2014 Osaka Asian Film Festival, chosen as the Closing Film at the 2014 Udine Far East Film Festival, and participated in over 10 international film festivals with glowing reviews. Shift was also acquired and distributed in Japan by Pictures Dept. Her first directorial short animated film, Out of Eden, is a grant recipient of the first GIFF Festival of New Cinema and is currently in production.

Dean is an international filmmaker working in New York and Manila. His award-winning films have been screened all over the world including TIFF, SXSW, Sitges, Fantastic Fest, and Slamdance. Several of his shorts are Vimeo Staff Picks and Short of the Week selections and have been featured on VICE, CNN, and Filmmaker Magazine.

Kip is an award-winning director who created films based on his personal experiences. One is the highest grossing Cinemalaya back in 2018, Liway starring Glaiza De Castro. It is a personal film to him because for one, it is the story of his mother, Cecilia, with a nom de guerre Kumander Liway who was once a member of the New People's Army during the Martial Law years. It is also based on true events about his life as a young boy growing up in a prison cell in Bacolod.

Direk Erik is confident that their new and young directors will be able to delivery quality projects that will get the interest of the international audience.

"One of the main reasons why we picked them, more than the stories they tell and how they tell their stories using film or cinema, is their sensibility towards crafting things properly. I think the competition is really high with the streamers.

"It's not easy getting projects from these international [companies]. The amount of due diligence that they're doing to make sure that their money goes to the right hand is really, really, tedious.

"Of course, we'd like to be confident with these directors when we put them in those projects that we can vouch for them, we can assure everybody, the international streamers, that yes, we will deliver what we promised with these directors," he concluded

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