Five years ago, the Filipino film Hello, Love, Goodbye took audiences by surprise, becoming a massive success when it was released in 2019. Now, director Cathy Garcia-Sampana returns with the sequel, Hello, Love, Again, reuniting with the original film’s stars, Kathryn Bernardo and Alden Richards, in hopes of achieving even greater success. Given that the first film became the highest-grossing movie of all time in the Philippines, the sequel feels like a natural progression.
PopWire had the privilege of speaking with Garcia-Sampana, who directed both films, to discuss the challenges of creating a sequel, the on-screen chemistry between the leads, and why this highly anticipated follow-up, five years in the making, is worth seeing.
When Hello, Love, Goodbye first debuted in 2019, Garcia-Sampana admits she didn’t anticipate the overwhelming success the film would achieve, nor the global recognition it would garner. Reflecting on the impact of the film, she shares that she feels “overwhelmed” by the outpouring of support.
“Every time I get messages, people come up to me, send me letters and say, ‘Direk [Director], this made my heart happy,'” she says. “It’s priceless, priceless to know that I have made people happy.”
After the success of the first movie, the demand for a sequel was inevitable. Garcia-Sampana acknowledges the immense pressure of following up on such a major hit, explaining that “the pressure was there” and admitting that “making a Part 2 is much harder” than crafting the original.
“You have to elevate everything — the storytelling, the characters, the actors, everything, the entire experience,” she explains. “That’s why Hello, Love, Again turned out this way, it’s because of that drive to give something new, something maybe better. The pressure will always be there, but at the end of the day, we just kept in mind that I’m just telling Joy’s and Ethan’s story.”
She continues, “That kept me going and helped take the pressure off me. It reminded me that my job is to tell their story. Whether people like it or not, I can’t please everyone. What matters is that I give my best to tell their story in two hours. So condensing five years into two hours – that was the toughest part.”
A key factor in the success of Hello, Love, Goodbye was the undeniable chemistry between its two leads. Known for her ability to bring heartfelt, relatable love stories to the screen, Garcia-Sampana reveals that she didn’t have to do much to help Kathryn and Alden’s chemistry shine through.
“I must tell you, I did almost nothing [laughs]; It’s all them,” she says. “I was surprised at how much they had matured over the five years. Their friendship grew from the first film to this one. Honestly, I should probably give a bit of my salary to them [laughs]. I didn’t do much when it comes to their chemistry – it’s all them.”
Because it’s been a few years since Goodbye and its sequel chronicles the subsequent five years, Garcia-Sampana notes that both characters have evolved in that time. She reveals that for Hello, Love, Again, she took a slightly different approach to how she developed Joy’s character.
“Kathryn spoke to me in a private one-on-one, very personal meeting and asked for a different take on how we should handle Joy,” she shares. “Seeing how mature she had become, I agreed, and I felt like it worked. It worked wonderfully, giving a different approach to how I directed her in the movie. I don’t know if you felt it, but I felt it too – I wasn’t talking to the same Kathryn I worked with in Hello, Love, Goodbye. I was talking to a grown woman now, and I think that made all the difference.”
The highly anticipated sequel is already breaking records, with pre-sale tickets in the Philippines approaching nearly a million dollars. For those who haven’t yet bought tickets, Garcia-Sampana has a message: “Oh, if you thought you saw everything, uh-uh! You gotta watch this. You see a lot, lot more. Five years squeezed into two hours.”
Finally, with two films now in the Hello, Love series, we asked Cathy Garcia-Sampana if there’s potential for installment number three, turning the story into a trilogy.
“Well, life doesn’t stop at two!”
Hello, Love, Again is in theaters now.
