Xion Lim is shaping up to be the next major director to watch in Philippine showbiz. Working with two other directors, he has just concluded a 47-episode run of his first TV series, "Mano Po Legacy: The Flower Sisters." He has also signed an eight-picture contract with Regal Entertainment and another one with GMA Network is expected to be inked soon.
Before this, Xion was just doing his own thing for the YouTube channel of his production house Oxin Films, which has 380,000 subscribers to date. In 2020, he ventured into the boys' love (BL) genre and launched #MyDay, a beautifully-made BL series about an intern and his wicked boss in a food company. The series gained many fans and one of them was Joey Abacan, the First Vice-President for Program Management of GMA. Abacan is credited for introducing Xion to Regal Entertainment CEO Roselle Monteverde and that's how everything fell into place.
"I have been running my own business for a long time but it's a different feeling now that these two companies have put their trust in me. I can't disappoint them," he revealed.
Xion considers himself a third-generation creative. His grandfather was a journalist and when the old man died, Xion recovered a few manual vintage cameras which he treasures to this day. His father, on the other hand, had an audio-video business in their hometown of Zamboanga City.
Xion tried singing but it was filmmaking which his family approved. He took up Multimedia Arts in De La Salle University - College of St. Benilde. "We were the first batch to graduate. so I didn't get to see the new building," he observed.
When you ask him about how he started in showbiz, he will say it all began in 2006 when he directed, produced and co-wrote the script of Xenoa, a sci-fi action fantasy film starring the late Isabel Granada and Paolo Ballesteros.
Xion is proud of the fact that he had the movie released in theaters without knowing big names in the industry. "I just looked for the booking number of SM Cinemas on the Yellow Pages. I did it all on my own."
He would go on to make a couple of other indie films such as the comedy film "Pendong." Around 2010, Xion decided to concentrate on the production side of Oxin Films as it seemed to be more lucrative. They made corporate AVPs, TV commercials, music videos and the like. " From 2016 to 2019, I also produced blocktime shows on GMA," he bared.
The business gave him enough to invest in world-class equipment. Xion is one of the few directors in town who owns not one, but four, Panasonic BGH1 Lumix 4K cameras which are approved by Netflix to suit their quality specifications.
The 2020 pandemic ground most commercial work to a halt and it also affected Oxin. It was during this time that Xion looked again at his company's Youtube channel which already had close to 5 million views without being monetized. It was then that he decided to produce well-loved web series that not only earned revenues for Oxin Films, but also gained them fans from all over.
Other original web series like "House Rules" and "Rainbow Prince" were made, with the latter winning Best BL series recently from TAG Awards Chicago and Lustre Awards 2022. MyStory, the much-awaited sequel to #MyDay, is scheduled to be shown in April or May 2023 and will still star Miko Gallardo as Sky.
Xion vows to continue making BL shows as he observes that the trend is far from waning. " The BL genre always welcomes new content and fresh ideas. It already has a solid following."
As for Regal Entertainment, he bared that they have flexibility on what project to do. " We are working on two movies this year. There were scripts that were sent to me already. But it's not limited to films. It can also be a TV show or a web series." Xion's hands are full, indeed.