LUNCHBOX WRAPS UP BREAKOUT YEAR WITH LOCAL, GLOBAL STUDIO ALLIANCES

By Rommel Gonzales

Independent entertainment and culture agency Lunchbox has secured a formidable slate of local and international studio partnerships to cap off its breakout year, officially coming on board as the marketing partner for industry titans GMA Pictures and Columbia Pictures’ 2026 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) entry, Amir.

The collaboration is the latest tour de force in Lunchbox’s 2026 run, which saw the year-old agency bagging top Kidlat prizes for film marketing, inking a distribution deal with global hitmaker A24 and getting a seat at Asian cinema’s table in the Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) in Busan, South Korea.

Zig Dulay’s fantasy-drama Amir—starring Dennis Trillo, Glaiza De Castro and Argus Aspiras—marks the second MMFF film distribution deal between GMA Pictures and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures after Dulay’s Green Bones, which sealed a rare back-to-back Best Picture streak for the local studio in the festival’s 2024 cycle.

National Artist Ricky Lee, who co-wrote Green Bones, returned to pen the screenplay for Amir alongside acclaimed screenwriter Angeli Atienza.

Lunchbox founder Carl Chavez called the marketing collaboration a massive milestone for the young company, expressing his gratitude for the rare opportunity to team up with an established local heavyweight like GMA.

“For GMA to bring an independent agency like ours into the fold is an exciting time for connecting a story as nuanced as Amir’s to the right audiences,” Chavez said.

Steeped in rich Muslim Mindanao heritage, the film follows 10-year-old Amir (Aspiras) in a powerful bond-testing story of a family facing looming darkness that threatens to engulf their village.

“Amir tells a kind of story we don’t hear enough about today,” Lunchbox managing partner Frankie Primavera said. “And Lunchbox is all about great stories that need to be told.”

“It’s a perfect match,” she added.

But that match seems to have been made over a year ago, when GMA Pictures executive vice president Nessa Valdellon first heard about Lunchbox’s film marketing campaigns during a workshop session.

“I actually attended a workshop given by Carl Chavez on film marketing a year ago and enjoyed how he deconstructed promo campaigns,” Valdellon recalled, citing Lunchbox’s gritty, out-of-the-box campaigns for Antoinette Jadaone’s Berlinale-acclaimed sports coming-of-age Sunshine and Petersen Vargas’ queer road drama

Some Nights I Feel Like Walking.

“It would be fun to let Carl and the Lunchbox team put their spin on the promo for our upcoming MMFF entry,” she said. “It’s a beautiful film, perhaps our best to date, and needs a push beyond what we’ve done in the past.”

And push it shall. Winning the Grand Kidlat for its unconventional, interactive marketing campaign for Vargas’ film, the country’s pioneering independent film marketing agency has been known exactly for doing just that.

“But this time, it will be a different kind of push,” said Chavez. “With Amir, our campaigns will go back to the real essence of cinema viewing: a great story is most beautifully experienced inside a cinema.”

“What story does this film want to tell? It’s really GMA Pictures baring its soul to a lot of audiences this year, and that’s what we will focus on,” he added.

A Cliffhanger

While Lunchbox keeps finding the best ways to amplify the stories of its partners, Primavera noted the young company has also been busy closing out a defining chapter of its own.

This year alone, the agency has driven campaigns for a slew of major titles ranging from Irene Villamor’s

box-office smash The Loved One to Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana (the Philippines’ entry for the 2027 Academy Awards’ International Feature Film category).

By September, Lunchbox had stepped beyond pure marketing, acquiring the local theatrical distribution rights to A24’s Cannes breakout Club Kid—a leap toward becoming a full-fledged entertainment and culture firm that Chavez says champions a sustainable framework for the industry.

That momentum reached new peaks in October, with Chavez taking the global stage as a panelist at Busan’s prestigious ACFM, and Lunchbox clinching that powerhouse marketing partnership with GMA.

“When a great story is being developed, we’re just happy to know that they choose to partner with us,”

Primavera said.“Because Lunchbox itself is an unfolding story that we want to keep telling people about.”