Filipino mythical monsters may be a totally incongruous sight on KwaZulu-Natal beaches but such was the case on 23 April at Tinley Manor, when the media descended en masse for a set visit on the UK/ South Africa treaty co-production, Aswang.

Dubbed a supernatural thriller (as opposed to ‘horror flick’ or ‘creature feature’), Aswang is co-produced by Focus Films of the UK and Anton Ernst Entertainment of South Africa. The film is being shot on the Thomson Viper FilmStream, a high definition (HD) system imported from Motion Effects in the UK.

Aswang stars Billy Zane (Titanic) and South Africa’s Colin Moss (Idols, Fear Factor, Number 10). It follows the terrifying ordeals of a film crew in the Philippines jungle who encounter the dreaded mythical monster, the aswang. All shooting is taking place in South Africa.

Directed by the UK’s Terence Daw (Thieftakers, The Bill) in his big screen debut, the film features a predominantly South African crew and will be post-produced in the UK. Focus Films executive producers Malcolm Kohll and David Pupkewitz are ex-South Africans based in London. (See full story in the June issue of Screen Africa.)

The Aswang set visit served as an opportunity to introduce MFilms, which has been operational for three months, to the media. A division of MFP Holdings (which bought The Refinery Group of companies in September last year), MFilms will be responsible for marketing and distributing Aswang in South Africa and certain other territories including South and North Korea, India, China and the Philippines.

General manger Johan Theunissen described MFilms as a film studio which works with a slate of 10 films per year. “What is really lacking in South Africa is effective marketing for local films. We’ve found that the more a film is marketed, the better it does commercially. Look at the Afrikaans teen comedy Bakgat! – it’s exceeding all expectations at the box office and we expect Aswang to do the same. The film will be released in October to coincide with Halloween, with the DVD release to be scheduled for December.

“MFilms looks at a product at script level and sees if there is a market for it in South Africa. We want an industry we can be proud of and we also want to build South African celebrities. Although we are commercially-oriented, our projects have to be of good quality and that all starts with the script.”

Theunissen noted that MFilms took inspiration from the South African music industry. “The Afrikaans music industry used to comprise a mere 5% of the local market until people started marketing it properly. Now Afrikaans music sales are as big as international sales. We want to emulate that. It’s all possible as long as you have a commercially viable film and as long as you define a target market and know what works best for that target market - ie. does this particular market prefer going to the cinema or watching films at home?

“Our studio works on a slate model to spread the risk. We bring producers together under one umbrella. The MFilms business model dictates that we need to earn between 45% and 50% of our revenue from DVD sales. In South Africa home entertainment is particularly popular because crime deters people from going to cinemas at night, especially in township and remote areas.”

Producer Anton Ernst (Number 10) of Anton Ernst Entertainment is currently under the MFilms umbrella and has already produced Darrell James Roodt’s Lullaby (due for release in August) with the company.

Theunissen stressed that while MFilms wants to take care of a film’s commercial aspects, it does not want to stifle creativity. “While we want market penetration for our products first and foremost, we have no intention of becoming dictators. MFilms is planning to partner with another four production companies (apart from Anton Ernst Entertainment) to realise our goal of five films a year. I’m currently finalising the budget for Rageltjie, an animated feature about Rageltjie de Beer, a folk hero who saved her brother’s life. We’re also looking at traditional African tales as a source for scripts.”