USA • October 2026. Critics Loved Forgotten Island. Now It Needs Filipino Americans in the Seats. forgotten island box office, forgotten island opening weekend, dreamworks filipino mythology movie, januel mercado, h.e.r. vallejo, liza soberano, lea salonga manananggal, filipino american history month, fahm 2026, support filipino film, 10/1.

Forgotten Island • October 2026

Critics Loved Forgotten Island. Now It Needs Filipino Americans in the Seats.

A Fil-Am director from Stockton made a studio film out of the stories our lolas told us. Audiences gave it an A. Then it opened fifth. This weekend is when we decide what Hollywood learns from it.

PinoyBuilt illustration: an empty seat, a capiz-window screen, and one ticket waiting to be used. Not a still from the film.

I was supposed to see Forgotten Island on Tuesday with my bunso, Chesca. That was the plan. Then the plan met a better offer: on Tuesday she was on a flight to Burbank, and on Wednesday night she and her kuya, JianCarlo, were at SoFi Stadium watching Bruno Mars open the first of his five Los Angeles nights on The Romantic Tour. The tickets came from Tita Lila, my dad's bunso, the same Tita Lila who sat with us on a family trip to Maui in 2011 and told me "Filipino Built" was too long. Call it PinoyBuilt, she said. So I can hardly complain that Fil-Am pop beat Fil-Am folklore at our house this week.

But I still haven't seen it, and neither have a lot of us. While we were busy, the first weekend's numbers came in, and they are the reason this piece exists. Forgotten Island is a DreamWorks Animation feature built on Philippine mythology, co-written and co-directed by a Filipino American from Stockton, voiced by a cast led by a Filipina American from my own city of Vallejo. Audiences who saw it gave it an A. And it opened in fifth place. If we want studios to keep telling our stories, this is the weekend that matters.

📌 Did You Know?
The character Jo, voiced by Vallejo's own H.E.R., is named after director Januel Mercado's sister, Joann, who helped him shape the project. A Fil-Am family story sits at the center of a DreamWorks film. H.E.R. told Reuters the creature her own mother always came back to, when she told her Filipino folktales, was the manananggal.

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🇵🇭 Tagalog Word of the Day
Pagtangkilik — pag-tang-KEE-lik
Patronage; the act of supporting something by choosing it. The root is tangkilik, to patronize or back. It is the word inside the old call to buy local, tangkilikin ang sariling atin: support what is ours. It applies to a jeepney, a sari-sari store, a kababayan's small business, and, this weekend, a movie ticket.

The Numbers, Plainly

Forgotten Island opened in U.S. theaters on September 25, two days after its Philippine release on September 23. According to Deadline's weekend report, it earned an estimated $12.8 million over its first three days in 3,548 theaters, finishing fifth. It was a crowded weekend: the re-release Avengers: Endgame Encore led, and two new live-action films, Primetime and Heart of the Beast, each opened higher.

That is well under where the film was expected to land. In late August, Box Office Pro's long-range tracking put its domestic opening between $20 million and $30 million, and warned that Universal's marketing campaign was thin and would need to pick up. Weekend projections slid in the final days before release, and the opening came in below even the lowered range.

Measure	Figure	Source
Domestic opening (Sept. 25–27)	$12.8 million, 5th place	Deadline
Theaters	3,548	Deadline
Late-August tracking	$20M–$30M opening	Box Office Pro
Audience grade	A CinemaScore	Deadline
Global opening	About $20.6 million	Cartoon Brew, SlashFilm
Reported budget	$80 million	SlashFilm, The Numbers
Running total, first days	About $15.0M domestic, $24.6M worldwide	The Numbers

Against an $80 million budget, a roughly $20.6 million global start is a weak one, and the trade press has already started using the word flop. That word will follow the film into every boardroom where someone pitches the next Filipino story.

The People Who Went Loved It

Here is the part of the story the headlines bury. The families who did go loved it. Deadline reported an A CinemaScore and an 83% "definite recommend" from general audiences. Universal's domestic distribution chief, Jim Orr, told Deadline that on the strength of those audience and critical scores he expects the film to have a long and successful domestic run. SlashFilm, in the same breath as calling the opening a flop, described Forgotten Island as one of the most acclaimed animated films of the year. It reported a 95% critics' approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 96% audience score.

So this is not a movie people saw and rejected. It is a movie not enough people knew was there. That is a distribution and awareness problem, and awareness is exactly the kind of problem a community can fix.

Why This One Is Ours

Forgotten Island follows two best friends, Jo and Raissa, voiced by H.E.R. and Liza Soberano, on their last night together in the 1990s Philippines before they go their separate ways. They fall through a portal to Nakali, an island of creatures from Philippine mythology, where the longer they stay, the more of their shared memories they lose. Lea Salonga voices the island's most feared creature, the Manananggal. The cast also includes Dolly de Leon, Manny Jacinto, and Jo Koy. Reuters described it as the first major Hollywood feature-length animated film inspired by Filipino culture and mythology.

Behind the camera, the story is even closer to home. Januel Mercado was born and raised in Stockton, the city of Little Manila, to Filipino parents, and studied animation at San Jose State. He worked his way up from storyboard artist, co-directed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish with Joel Crawford, and Forgotten Island is his first full directing credit. Crawford's wife is Filipina. Speaking in Manila during the film's August tour of the Philippines, Mercado put the whole point of the project into one sentence:

"It is everything for everyone to finally see and hear our stories."
Januel Mercado, director, as reported by Interaksyon

And H.E.R., born Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson, grew up in Vallejo with a Filipina mother. Vallejo has been a Filipino town since the Mare Island shipyard years. A kid from our city is voicing the lead in a studio film about the creatures our elders used to scare us with. I wrote about what this film means for the diaspora back in March, in The Memory Heist, before anyone had seen a frame of it. Now it is here, and the question is no longer whether it gets made. It is whether it gets seen.

Why the opening weeks matter beyond this one film. Studios decide what to make next partly by looking at how comparable films performed. If an original animated film with Filipino leads, Filipino creatures, and a Filipino setting gets filed as a September disappointment, that is the comparison the next Filipino pitch will be measured against. Whose stories get funded is a question of power, and in a theater, the only power most of us hold is the ticket. A strong hold in the second weekend does not erase a soft opening, but it changes the story that gets told about it.

The Precedent the Same Filmmakers Already Set

There is a reason not to give up on this one. Crawford and Mercado have been here before. As SlashFilm noted, their Puss in Boots: The Last Wish opened to just $12.4 million in December 2022, nearly the same start as Forgotten Island, and then kept playing on word of mouth until it reached $480.4 million worldwide. To be honest about it, SlashFilm also pointed out that December is a far better season for a long run than late September, when the holiday crowds are months away. Legs are possible. They are not automatic. They are made by people telling other people to go.

What Showing Up Looks Like This Weekend

This is Filipino American History Month. As I wrote this morning in Who Built Filipino American History Month?, the founders chose the word history over heritage because history asks us to act, not just to celebrate. Here is a very small act, and a very concrete one.

• See it in a theater, this weekend, if you can. Not on streaming later. The theatrical run is the number that gets reported, and right now it is still being written.
• Bring the lolas and the lolos. They are the ones who told us these stories first. Let them watch a studio tell them back.
• Bring the kids. The ones born here, who have never heard of a manananggal or a tiyanak, are exactly who this film is for. It is the easiest decolonization lesson you will ever give.
• Make it a group. A barkada, a church youth group, a college Filipino student organization, a FANHS chapter, a family party that moves to the multiplex for two hours. Group outings are how communities move numbers.
• Talk about it. Post your ticket. Tell your group chat. Text this article to a tita. Word of mouth is what carried The Last Wish, and it is the only marketing budget we control.

Bunso, We Have a Date

Chesca and JianCarlo got their night with Bruno Mars, and I am glad they did; a Tita Lila gift is not something you turn down. But when my bunso gets home, we are going to the movies. Two Filipino Americans, one born in Makati and one born here, watching a story about two friends who risk forgetting everything they shared. I have spent fifty years trying not to forget the island I came from. This one, I want to see with my daughter, in a theater, while it is still there to see.

See you at the movies, kababayan.

Sources

• Deadline — Box Office: 'Avengers Endgame' Leads Weekend (Forgotten Island opening, CinemaScore, Universal's Jim Orr)
• Box Office Pro — Long Range Forecast: Forgotten Island
• Cartoon Brew — Forgotten Island Opening Weekend
• SlashFilm — One of the Most Acclaimed Animated Movies of 2026 Flopped at the Box Office
• The Numbers — Forgotten Island (2026) Box Office
• Reuters, via The Standard — Filipino folklore takes center stage in DreamWorks' Forgotten Island
• ABS-CBN — DreamWorks Animation producing a movie based on Philippine mythology (Januel Mercado background)
• Interaksyon / Philstar — Januel Mercado on bringing Filipino stories to the world
• Interaksyon / Philstar — DreamWorks' Forgotten Island brings Filipino-inspired story home
• GMA Network — H.E.R. delivers a cover of 'Maging Sino Ka Man' (Vallejo upbringing)
• Wikipedia — Forgotten Island (cast list)
• SoFi Stadium — Bruno Mars brings The Romantic Tour to SoFi Stadium on September 30

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Founder & Editor

J.F.R. Perseveranda

J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.

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