Actor Vic Sotto has been getting so much adulation from fellow lead stars in the 2024 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) entry The Kingdom, which Sotto himself has been describing as "hindi medyo drama kundi dramang-drama (not semi-drama but full-on drama).”

Sotto’s co-lead actors Piolo Pascual, Sid Lucero, Christine Reyes and Sue Ramirez have all declared they got “kilig” over him at their first individual meetings and first scenes with him. They made the revelation at the recent media conference for the film held in Quezon City.

It was a grandiose event in which Sotto and Pascual made individual entrances with a poetic declaration in traditional Tagalog of their stance about governance of a monarchy. 

One part of the media conference hall (Novotel’s Verseille’s Tent on the seventh floor) was converted as a display area for the gowns, crowns and tiaras, accessories and paraphernalia of the characters in the film’s narrative. Another wall had painted bust portraits of the lead characters of the film. 

The Kingdom reimagines the Philippines as a land untouched by colonization, where a powerful monarchy still rules. It is contemporary, not a period film. Take note, the story is fiction. Its director, a now quite portly Mike Tuviera, describes The Kingdom as “a non-political political film.” (When Tuviera started directing films in 2010, he looked good enough to be an actor himself.)

In that media event, co-lead actors Pascual, Lucero, Reyes and Ramirez also admitted being overwhelmed by the seriousness of the film and by the dignity of Sotto in playing the role of a king in a monarchial country. 

Hearing what the film is all about and its seriousness, some showbiz wags could not help but blurt out: “How would Vic feel if the film does not become a box office hit like practically all his comedy entries in previous MMFFs gloriously did?”

Are Pinoy moviegoers ready and raring for a non-comical movie starring the comedian Vic Sotto?

It has also been announced that the characters Sotto and Pascual play in the film would meet only three to four times, possibly including a hand-to-hand combat. If people were to watch a Sotto-Pascual movie, would they not prefer one in which the two headliner actors have so many unforgettable and extraordinary scenes together. 

And do you know that children can’t watch The Kingdom because of the violent fight scenes in it? Majority of those bloody scenes though don’t involve Sotto and Pascual trying to cut each other’s neck.