photo from Facebook/@officialricoblanco
The OPM singer-songwriter stars opposite Sue Ramirez in Regal Entertainment’s “Project Baby,” a late-career screen turn that places a familiar music figure in romantic-comedy territory
MANILA — Rico Blanco has spent decades being recognized for songs that became part of Filipino pop memory. The OPM singer-songwriter and former Rivermaya member has long been known more for music than screen romance. In Project Baby, he steps into a different kind of spotlight: romantic-comedy leading man.
Blanco, 53, stars opposite Sue Ramirez in the Regal Entertainment film, playing Migo to Ramirez’s Sandy, a woman weighing motherhood on her own terms. The project marks Blanco’s first leading-man role in a romantic comedy, a shift he said brought both gratitude and self-doubt.
At a media conference for the film, Blanco said he found it difficult to believe he had been cast in the role and described feeling a sense of “impostor syndrome.” The remark gave the promotion of Project Baby a more personal note, showing an artist widely known in one field confronting the vulnerability of entering another.
The casting gives the film an offbeat appeal. Ramirez is an established screen actress, while Blanco’s public identity has been shaped largely by music: as a former Rivermaya member, solo artist, songwriter and producer whose work has helped define several eras of OPM.
Project Baby is directed by Eric Quizon and written by Joey Javier Reyes. Regal Entertainment has promoted the film as a romantic comedy about choice, timing and family, with its theatrical release set for June 10.
For Blanco, the role is less a reinvention than an expansion of a familiar career. After years of performing songs associated with longing, memory and romance, he now carries those themes onscreen as part of a love story.
The appeal rests partly in that shift: a musician long associated with songs about love now asked to inhabit one onscreen.
