CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The highly anticipated first Filipino Netflix original animé series Trese is set to premiere June 11 on Netflix.
Based from the award-winning and critically acclaimed Filipino graphic novel series of the same title created by Budjette Tan and KaJO Baldisimo, Trese is set in Manila where the mythical creatures of Philippine folklore live in hiding amongst humans as detective Alexandra Trese finds herself going head to head with a criminal underworld of malevolent supernatural beings.
Highlighting Philippine urban legends and folklore, Trese is a horror animated series that was created for the screen by American storyboard artist and director Jay Oliva (Wonder Woman, Justice League Dark, The Legend of Korra). Trese is voiced by Shay Mitchell (YOU, Pretty Little Liars) in the English language version and Liza Soberano (My Ex and Whys, Alone/Together) in the Tagalog version.
In an exclusive online press briefing held Tuesday, writer and executive producer Tanya Yuson shared their preparations in adapting from the comic series into the animated version as they also needed to expand the scenes in order to capture its authenticity to make the story accessible and well-grounded to all audiences.
“When you adapt between mediums, from a comic to an animated series, there are things we need to flesh out. KaJO, Budjette, and I had talked about it as they need to be mostly prepared since it kind of morphs from what they have. And to their credit, they said go for it as they also wanted to see what we end up doing. We felt they had confidence in us doing it,” said Yuson.
“Expanding and filling out what you don’t see and really grounding it into authentic details of the Philippines but at the same time making the story accessible to the audiences while serving the story arch of the six episodes and giving them a satisfying ending,” Yuson furthered.
Keeping with the universal theme of family, Oliva shared how they wanted to keep its authenticity to capture the tone of the comic series.
“As a Filipino, I grew up with the culture. Even though I grew up in the States, I was raised in very traditional Filipino. One of the things I wanted to focus on is family and duty,” said Oliva.
“We made a conscious decision of what can we take that the hardcore fans would like but what can we also add in for the new fans that is still very specific to the original comic and original audience of the Philippines as we were making this from Manila and we wanted to make sure the location is as authentic as possible but still keep the universal theme of family,” Oliva added.
The creature is a tiyanak
With much excitement and anticipation of the animated series based on its official trailer which was released on May 21, Oliva said they took the lead from the original design of the comic series and took the liberty to reference its characters where one of the creature was based from another 80’s movie as KaJO Balidisimo quipped that the tiyanak from the comics is still very “anak ni Janice.”
“We took our lead from the original design from the comic and took a little liberty and referenced it from another 80s movie. Our animated version added spider legs and made it a little weird,” said Oliva.
“I had to double check it once it came out on Netflix as I tried to make sure that when you hear the baby crying it was far away or close by. So that way if you hear it from far away it is close by but if it’s close by it’s actually far away,” shared Oliva. “If you can turn up the base, it’s scary as we made sure that you can hear the surround sound like it’s crawling all around.”
Meanwhile, Netflix Philippines is set to celebrate the premiere of the series with a special countdown event, Trese Before Midnight on its official Netflix Facebook page on June 10, 11:47pm
Trese is set to be released by midnight of June 11 on Netflix.
*All photos courtesy of Netflix
