Forgotten Island brings Filipino folklore, and Malaysian-born Ronny Chieng, to 94 cinemas

Forgotten Island opened in Malaysia on Thursday 24 September, a day before its American release, and it is the family film with the most room this week. This site's listings, which run to Wednesday 30 September, have DreamWorks Animation's new film at 94 cinemas with 1,196 sessions, and 237 of those are in GSC's Play halls, the ones designed for families with children, at 16 cinemas.

An island that takes memories, in the Philippines of 1990

Malay Mail's Ian Jeremiah Patrick set out the story on opening day. Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado direct a film set in the Philippines in 1990, in which two childhood friends, Jo and Raissa, are carried off to Nakali, an island that threatens to wipe out their memories of each other while they look for a way home. What they meet there comes from Philippine folklore, among them the manananggal, the kataw, the tiyanak and the batibat, the last of them blamed for nightmares. Karaoke, food, family gatherings and Tagalog run through the everyday scenes, and the paper sets it beside Coco as a studio film built on one culture's stories.

A Malaysian-born voice in the cast

The cast Malay Mail lists is largely Filipino or of Filipino heritage. Liza Soberano voices Raissa and H.E.R. voices Jo, with Lea Salonga, Dolly de Leon, Manny Jacinto and Jo Koy, and Dave Franco and Jenny Slate alongside. The name Malaysian audiences will know best is Ronny Chieng, the Malaysian-born comedian and actor, who voices King Truffle Wuffle. The paper also reported that the film opened with a score of 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes from its first reviews, and that a Malaysian viewer at an early screening had found its Southeast Asian details relatable.

$80 million, and a rollout that began in Mexico

The Numbers puts the budget at $80 million, with Universal distributing, and dates the rollout from Mexico on 16 September, through Australia and New Zealand on the 17th and South Korea and the Philippines on the 23rd, to North America on the 25th. Box Office Mojo's early tables give it opening weekends of $555,818 in Mexico and $516,786 in Australia; Malaysia is not broken out in either. For parents, The Numbers carries the reasons behind the American PG: animated scary action, language, rude humour, thematic elements, some violence and brief tobacco imagery. Here the chains rate it P12 and list it at 109 minutes, the same 1 hour 49 minutes Box Office Mojo gives, though The Numbers has 98.

Play halls at 16 GSC cinemas, from Kangar to Bintulu

The Play sessions run from GSC IOI Mall Damansara, with 21 this week, and GSC AEON Dato Onn with 17, to GSC Kangar Jaya Mall in Perlis and GSC The Spring in Bintulu, which have 16 each, as 1 Utama and The Starling Mall do. GSC carries the film at 52 cinemas and TGV at 33; 10 Star has it at five of its Sabah cinemas, from Kota Marudu to Tawau, and FST, Dadi and One Cinemas make up the rest. The schedule is a daytime one, as a family film's should be: 109 sessions start in the 10am hour, and only one runs past midnight.

Booking a morning show

P12 means children under 12 watch with a parent or guardian. A 10am session of a 109-minute film is out before lunch, and the Play halls are marked on every session on the Forgotten Island page, which lists every cinema carrying it. The showtimes page puts each cinema's Forgotten Island times side by side, and every session links to the chain's own booking page.