EXCLUSIVE: Leonor Will Never Die producer Monster Jimenez will next work on Mario Cornejo’s My Neighbor the Gangster, a film loosely based on Cornejo’s childhood.

Principal photography for My Neighbor the Gangster is set for October this year in the Philippines, with a release targeted for next year. My Neighbor the Gangster tells the story of how a young boy’s life changes forever when the country’s biggest gangster moves his mistress and love child next door to the boy’s seaside residence.

The film has already received a development fund from the Film Development Council of the Philippines  and is the latest collaboration of husband-and-wife team Cornejo and Jimenez. They have co-written the script, with Cornejo directing and Jimenez producing.

Both were also producers on the 2022 film Leonor Will Never Die from director Martika Escobar, which became the Philippines’ first film to compete at the Sundance Film Festival since 2006. The film also won a Special Jury Prize at the festival.

My Neighbor the Gangster will be produced under the pair’s This Side Up label. The last film that Cornejo directed was the 2015 surfing drama Apocalypse Child, which Jimenez also produced.

“Our first film was way back in 2005 called Big Time,” said Jimenez. “It’s a comedy we made for $11,000 and we had such a good time making it that we knew we were going to make more movies and started calling it the Mario & Monster Show. The last was in 2015 with Apocalypse Child. That was the wake up call for us — life passing us by as we still had a lot of stories left to share. We didn’t realize it would take another 10 years before another collaboration.”

Cornejo added: “The fact that Monster and I are life partners as well as filmmaking partners makes the process easier. The film contains themes and ideas that we’ve talked about for over a decade. Even though this story is inspired from actual events from the earliest chapter of my life, it felt incredibly urgent for us to do it now.

“When I was ten years old, the Philippines ousted a dictator who held onto power for 20 years. When our son turned ten years old, that same dictator’s son was sworn into the presidency. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the protagonist in this movie is a ten-year old boy who learns to be a man when a gangster moves in next door.”