A pawn shop for supernatural beings. A recruitment agency for criminals. A world where people live in bubbles of their material obsessions. Such are the fascinating stories and visuals that fill the imaginative mind of up-and-coming Filipina screenwriter Mikki Crisostomo.
While her unpublished screenplays have yet to be translated into film, the 31-year-old writer is working her way up to bigger audiences as a writer for Disney. She is also among the new generation of artists hoping to promote Filipino culture to the rest of the world.
Currently, Crisostomo is among the staff writers for Disney Television Animation’s forthcoming fantasy-comedy series “The Owl House.” Created by “Gravity Falls” storyboard artist Dana Terrace, the series follows the adventures of a teenage girl who accidentally enters a portal into a demon realm and befriends a witch.
Disney Television Animation writer Mikki Crisistomo.
Despite not having prior experience in television and animation, Crisostomo was hired for the job right after graduating from Columbia University’s MFA Screenwriting Program earlier this year.
But life has not always been smooth-sailing for this promising writer.
In an email interview, Crisostomo talked about her journey to becoming a Disney writer and her dream to showcase Filipino stories and characters.
“I started out life as a little book nerd, and I strongly suspect that that's how I'm going to end it, too. Stories have always been my passion, and everything I've ever done has been because I wanted to tell stories of my own,” Crisostomo said.
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Eventually, she found her niche in screenplay writing and took up BA Film at the University of the Philippines.
“After I graduated from UP in 2010, my path kind of went sideways from what one would expect from a film degree,” she told ABS-CBN News.
For the next few years, she worked as a colorist, a motion graphics artist and as an associate creative director.
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While she did not regret her experience working in the Philippine media industry, Crisostomo said, “At some point I kind of felt like I had lost my way.”
“I had stopped writing stories,” Crisostomo said. “I had story ideas, but every time I tried to write them down, I lost steam along the way--it didn't seem like there was space for the kinds of stories I wanted to tell in the Philippines back then, so why bother?”
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Wanting to broaden her horizons, she decided to take up graduate studies abroad. Through her hard work, she got a partial scholarship for Columbia University’s competitive MFA Screenwriting program.
At Columbia, she juggled working part-time for the university and meeting deadlines for her courses.
“The Columbia program was much more intense than I was used to--when I wasn't cramming a beat outline for a rapidly approaching deadline, I was on a film set learning new skills and struggling not to reveal how completely out of shape I was,” she said.
Mikki Crisostomo graduates from Columbia University in New York.
The hard work eventually paid off.
She won faculty honors at the 2019 Columbia University Film Festival Screenwriting Competition for her TV pilot “Career Criminals” about “a temp agency in Manila for criminals, as seen through the eyes of a young woman who no longer wants to be in the family business (of murder).”
It was “Career Criminals” and a short screenplay titled “Black Magic Broker,” which tells the story of a girl who runs a counter at a pawn shop for supernatural beings, that got the attention of Disney executives.
It was also this year that she was picked to participate in the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab in Los Angeles where she developed her pitch for her screenplay “Babaylan,” which tells the story of a disillusioned priestess who accidentally summons a god, “under whose tutelage she learns to perform miracles and discovers the grave consequences of playing with ancient magic.”
While Crisostomo made sure not to divulge details and spoilers about the Disney series she is currently working on, teasers posted online show just how fantastical the world of “The Owl House” is. It seems right up the young writer’s alley with its monsters, witches and mythological creatures.
“I am a genre nerd through and through,” she told ABS-CBN News.
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“I loved reading Filipino myths and legends as a kid, and the influences have stayed with me into adulthood.”
Crisostomo believes that Filipino stories can have international appeal.
“Filipino culture is hugely untapped in the wider narrative market, and we need to do something about it,” she said, recalling how her coworkers at Disney were “blown away” by the idea of a “manananggal,” a blood-sucking monster in Filipino folklore.
Being a fan of artists like Whilce Portacio who promote Filipino culture in the comic book industry, Crisostomo said she always strives to write Filipino stories.
“Babaylan's all about Filipino culture, and I think that's why people here liked it so much. They had never read anything like it before,” she said of her latest screenplay.
Recently, Crisostomo went home to the Philippines to speak at Animahenasyon, a local animation festival. She said she was blown away with the work of Filipino creators.
Mikki Crisostomo speaks at the Animahenasyon animation festival in the Philippines.
“It’s easy to see how much creativity and talent we have--we just need to find a way to share and support it,” she said. “The entertainment world is opening up to stories that reflect other cultures and now is the time to ride this wave.”
Asked what her dream project is, Crisostomo wrote, “Let me make the first Filipino Disney princess! (I'm joking). I would love to see any of my projects realized--Babaylan as a full-length animated film, Career Criminals as a multi-season TV show with successful spinoffs, or Black Magic Broker as something more than an 11-page script. Dreams are free, right?”
For now though, she said she would love to continue writing for “The Owl House.”
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“I'm still so amazed that I get to write for a show that has everything I've always liked (spooky things, cool magic, and silly jokes!) so I hope that it lives a long, healthy life,” she said.
“Beyond that, one day it would be pretty amazing to develop my own stories! Give me the first Filipino Disney princess!”
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This article first appeared on ABS-CBN News.
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