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No less than international entertainment journalist Patrick Frater of variety.com who exclusively announced that Brillante Ma. Mendoza’s latest opus, “Gensan Punch” will be shown in HBO Asia Original anytime soon.
According to Patrick, Mendoza’s upcoming film about a Japanese paraplegic athlete who trained in General Santos City in the Philippines as a boxer and won many bouts but couldn’t fight in his homeland will have a regional streaming on HBO Go in the next few months.
“Gensan Punch” features Okinawan actor Shogen (“Death Note,” “Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist” etc. who came to the Philippines to shoot most parts of film before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Brillante, Shogen had to spend days in quarantine as part of the Philippines’ health protocols to mitigate the spread of the new coronavirus. “We made sure that our actors were safe and well during our shoots even during the pandemic but we concentrated more on Shogen’s scenes since most of the sequences with other actors were already done before the pandemic struck,” recalled Mendoza.
Before HBO outing, “Gensan Punch” will compete next month at the 2021 Busan International Film Festival in Korea.
It will also be screened at the 2021 Tokyo International Film Festival in Japan.
“Gensan Punch” is written by Honee Alipio and produced by Takahiro Tamashita and Krisma Maclang Fajardo.
It is executive produced by Mendoza, Simon Crowe and Fumie Suzuki Lancaster.