This is your chance to play an iconic Filipino character, ladies.
Movie production company Star Cinema announced yesterday that it will be holding open auditions on May 4 and 5 to choose the actress who will play the iconic Filipina superhero Darna in an upcoming film.
Auditions will be held at the Quezon City office of ABS-CBN, the media corporation which owns Star Cinema.
The announcement appeared on the Facebook account of ABS-CBN Star Hunt, a program which seeks talents for ABS-CBN. According to the announcement, they are looking for someone who is physically fit, knows contact sports, is fluent in Tagalog, and has acting experience.
Only those who are aged 20 to 26 years old are allowed to audition, and they have to be at least 5’5″ in height.
Anyone who succeeds in what could possibly be the biggest and toughest acting audition this year will end up working with director Jerrold Tarog, who directed the acclaimed movies Heneral Luna and Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral.
According to Olivia Lamasan, Star Cinema’s managing director, they have already held auditions for several women for the role of Darna.
“We’ve had several auditions with our artists from Star Magic (talent management), even past contestants of beauty pageants. There were athletes too, in fact, director Jerrold Tarog even has a short list but we want to keep the field open,” Lamasan told news show TV Patrol.
The Darna project was first assigned to director Erik Matti six years ago and initially, it was supposed to star Angel Locsin. Locsin previously starred as Darna in a TV series on GMA, ABS-CBN’s rival network. The actress eventually dropped out of the project in 2015 due to a spinal injury.
Actress Liza Soberano was chosen to replace Locsin, and everything appeared to be smooth-sailing until Matti decided to quit the project last year due to creative differences. Matti was replaced by Tarog but the project faced a new obstacle when Soberano quit last month, also because of an injury.
But many fans have never wavered in their enthusiasm to see Darna in the silver screen. No Filipino superhero comes close to the character’s iconic status and many believe that playing her marks a turning point in an actress’ career.
As expected, Star Cinema’s announcement was met with a lot of excitement. Many fans “nominated” their favorite stars, but a few joked that they want to audition too, such as Princess Singh, who said she is volunteering for the role.
She even superimposed her face to a photo of Darna.
Jonathan Casuyon thinks that looking for a newbie actress makes the upcoming Darna film even more exciting.
Patrick Centeno has an interesting suggestion: “During the audition, they have to swallow a pebble on the spot and shout ‘Darna!’ and their voice shouldn’t break.”
Darna is a character from comic books by Mars Ravelo. In them, a village girl named Narda turns into the superhero Darna when she swallows a pebble and shouts “Darna!”
“Do you have an audition for Valentina?” asked Alex Hulleza. “I’ll ask this person to join, she’s a snake.”
Valentina is Darna’s archenemy who has snakes growing out of her head.
Who do you want to play Darna? Leave a comment below or tweet us at @CoconutsManila.
