MANILA, Philippines – Jasmine Curtis-Smith has been cast in the central role in Empty by Design, an upcoming film by Andrea A Walter.

Jasmine will be starring alongside Osric Chau, who played Kevin Tran in the CW series Supernatural.

It also stars Dante Basco, who is known for playing Rufio in Hook, and Chris Pang, who plays Colin Khoo in Crazy Rich Asians.

“Our movie Empty by Design is kind of the Filipino version of Lost in Translation or a Wong Kar Wai movie. It’s following two Filipinos who were raised here, they leave for some time, they come back, they feel disconnected and isolated from their culture for many reasons,” Andrea told Rappler at the July 26 press conference for AsiaPOP Comicon 2018, where Osric is a featured guest.

Andrea, who is British-Filipino and lives in Los Angeles, said that the idea for the film came from her own experience of being a third culture kid.

“It’s following the struggle of trying to find out who you are and at the same time trying to find your culture. It’s also a struggle that millennials seem to have. It doesn’t even matter if you’re Filipino or not, if you’ve moved away from your hometown and you come back and you just have no idea, you have no relation to any of them,” she said.

With two beautiful actors occupying the lead roles – and with the Lost In Translation/Wong Kar Wai reference – people may think the film is a romance, but Andrea said it’s not.

“It is not a love story, let’s put it out there,” Andrea said. “Every Filipino wants a romcom, but we want to try something different.”

We’ll be doing a meet up in Manila on July 7th! Come hangout with producers @osricchau of ‘Supernatural’, @pangeerz of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ and our writer/director @andreawalter88! Follow our socials for more details to come!

A post shared by Empty By Design (@emptybydesignmovie) on Jul 2, 2018 at 12:23am PDT

She added that it’s easy for Jasmine to relate to her character because of her FIlipino-Australian background.

“Jasmine, talking to her and working with her on the movie, she feels the same way having to do the Australia-Philippines thing,” Andrea said. “Even though she hides it very well online, there is a disconnect with a lot of us, she feels the same way, so it’s easy for her to get into character.”

Osric said that the film is a passion project for the team, most of whom are personally connected to the story, being third culture kids themselves (Osric is Chinese-Canadian and Chris is Australian-Taiwanese).

“It doesn’t matter where we are in this planet, we are always seen as foreigners, always outsiders. This is a movie about people who kind of feel that way and finally find home in their own hometown,” he said at the presscon.

In the film, he plays a Filipino-Chinese character – and joked that he has been getting into the Filipino mindset by only wearing flipflops and shorts, and eating a lot of mangoes.

“I don’t wear shoes anymore, I don’t wanna wear pants, I only wear shorts…When I came here, I was eating like 6 mangoes every single day. So good,” he told Rappler.

The team is currently shooting in Manila, and according to Osric, filming is expected to wrap on August 20. According to Andrea, the film will be released in Q1 or Q2 of 2019. – Rappler.com