The ghosts of home-grown writer Suffian Hakim's The Minorities (2018) might soon be haunting a screen near you.
A screenplay based on the comic novel is one of three original Singaporean pilot episodes green-lit by Singapore streaming platform Hooq for the third season of its annual Filmmakers Guild.
Hooq is a joint venture established by Singtel, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros. It premiered its first Singaporean original series, She's A Terrorist And I Love Her, earlier this year.
In the third season of Hooq Filmmakers Guild, six pilots, picked from more than 1,000 entries from across Asia, will stream on the platform in mid-May.
The best-performing title will be produced as a fully commissioned series.
The pilots from Singapore also include Laughter Is All We Have by Jerrold Chong and Mark Wee, an animated showcase about the illegal exploits of a $1 note, a handcuff and a lighter; and Progress by Alistair Quak, set in the war-torn dystopian state of Izan in the distant future.
Also chosen were Carpioman and Dead End High from the Philippines and Scholar from Thailand.
In The Minorities, a struggling Singaporean inventor shares his Yishun flat with two migrant workers and a laboratory technician on the run from her abusive husband.
They are haunted by a pontianak, Diyanah, whom they eventually befriend.
Suffian, a writer for video production company Big 3 Media who is best known for his viral self-published Harry Potter parody Harris Bin Potter And The Stoned Philosopher, wrote the screenplay with his colleague Nicholas Lo, who is directing the pilot.
They have begun shooting with a cast that includes Straits Times Life Theatre Award-winning actor Andrew Marko as Tights, a Chinese migrant obsessed with superheroes, and actress Shenty Feliziana as the pontianak.
"It's insane," says Suffian, 33. "It's not about the acclaim or the attention - all I was really looking forward to was writing the script and putting together the show.
"That said, there's the boy from Bukit Panjang in me who's squealing happily."
