Hello, Love, Goodbye

Also known as: HLG · Hello, Love, Goodbye (2019 film)

Definition

Hello, Love, Goodbye is a 2019 Philippine romantic drama film directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina — credited in later years as Cathy Garcia-Sampana — written by Carmi G. Raymundo with Rona Co, Crystal S. San Miguel, and the director, and produced and distributed by Star Cinema, the film studio of ABS-CBN. Released in Philippine cinemas on July 31, 2019, the 117-minute Filipino-language film is set among overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong: Kathryn Bernardo plays Joy Marie Fabregas, a domestic helper and nursing graduate saving to move to Canada, and Alden Richards plays Ethan Del Rosario, a bartender pursuing Hong Kong residency; the two enter a time-limited relationship during Joy’s final months in the territory. (Wikipedia)

The pairing crossed the Philippine broadcast divide — Bernardo the ABS-CBN half of the KathNiel love team, Richards the GMA Network half of AlDub — the first screen team-up of the rival networks’ biggest stars, a match the press quickly nicknamed “KathDen.” It finished with ₱880.6 million worldwide — ₱691 million earned in the Philippines, ₱189.6 million internationally — and on September 3, 2019 Star Cinema announced it had overtaken The Hows of Us as the highest-grossing Filipino film of all time. It held the title for more than four years, until Rewind surpassed it in January 2024; the sequel Hello, Love, Again then became, in November 2024, the first Filipino film to pass ₱1 billion. (Rappler — September 2019, Wikipedia, Rappler — January 2024, Wikipedia — Hello, Love, Again)

Identities

Source	Identifier	URL
Wikipedia	Hello, Love, Goodbye	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello,_Love,_Goodbye
Wikidata	Hello, Love, Goodbye (Q65488244)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q65488244
DBpedia	Hello,_Love,_Goodbye	https://dbpedia.org/page/Hello,_Love,_Goodbye
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	Hello Love Goodbye Kathryn Bernardo Alden Richards Hong Kong OFW box office	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hello+Love+Goodbye+Kathryn+Bernardo+Alden+Richards+Hong+Kong+OFW
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

HLG
Hello, Love, Goodbye (2019 film)

Examples and Analogies

The cross-network experiment: casting the female lead of ABS-CBN’s KathNiel and the male lead of GMA’s AlDub in one Star Cinema vehicle functioned as a public ceasefire between the rival broadcast empires — the pairing itself was the film’s principal event, an equation the 2024 sequel completed by making Star Cinema and GMA Pictures formal co-producers. (Rappler — September 2019, Wikipedia — Hello, Love, Again)
The OFW story as national mirror: the film relocates the Philippine love story to Hong Kong’s Filipino workforce — a domestic helper and a bartender, both migrants with exit plans — so the romance runs on the calendar of an employment contract rather than on destiny; the deadline at its heart is a departure date. (Wikipedia)
The record relay: the film is one leg of a documented four-film relay in the record books — The Hows of Us (2018), Hello, Love, Goodbye (₱880.6 million, 2019), Rewind (₱924 million, 2023–24), Hello, Love, Again (first past ₱1 billion, 2024) — the standard chronology by which the modern Philippine box office is narrated. (Rappler — January 2024, Wikipedia — Hello, Love, Again)
Verified production and record data:
Cast: Kathryn Bernardo (Joy), Alden Richards (Ethan), with Kakai Bautista, Joross Gamboa, Maymay Entrata, Jameson Blake, and Maricel Laxa in a special participation (Wikipedia)
Release: July 31, 2019, in the Philippines; international screenings from August 1, 2019; reported as the first Filipino film screened in cinemas in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (Wikipedia)
Box office: opening day ₱34.4 million from more than 350 Philippine cinemas; ₱505.7 million domestic within 13 days; US$2.1 million in its first week abroad; final figures ₱691,000,000 domestic, ₱189,603,490 international, ₱880,603,490 worldwide (Wikipedia, Wikipedia — Highest-grossing films)
Records held: highest-grossing Filipino film of all time from September 3, 2019, surpassing The Hows of Us, until Rewind overtook it in January 2024; also the highest-grossing Filipino film of 2019 in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (Wikipedia, Rappler — January 2024)
Honors: Asian Academy Creative Awards (2020) for Best Direction (Fiction), Best Feature Film, and Best Original Screenplay; PMPC Star Awards for Movies (2021) including Movie of the Year; a Luna Award for editing (Wikipedia)
Sequel: Hello, Love, Again — released November 13, 2024, directed by Cathy Garcia-Sampana as the first major Star Cinema–GMA Pictures co-production, set in Canada; ₱1.06 billion by November 23, 2024, the first Filipino film past ₱1 billion, and ₱1.6 billion worldwide by late February 2025 (Wikipedia — Hello, Love, Again)

Usage Scenarios

1. Tracing the Philippine Box-Office Record

Film-economics researchers use the film as the middle anchor of the modern record sequence: the documented series — The Hows of Us (2018), this film (₱691.0 million domestic, ₱880.6 million worldwide, 2019), Rewind (₱924 million, 2023–24), Hello, Love, Again (₱1.0 billion domestic, ₱1.6 billion worldwide, 2024) — is the standard dataset for measuring the market’s growth and pandemic interruption. (Wikipedia — Highest-grossing films, Rappler — January 2024)

2. Analyzing Star Pairings Across Network Lines

Marketing analysts cite the film as the model of the cross-network event vehicle: Bernardo and Richards, each pre-sold by a rival network’s love team, were paired for the first time and delivered an all-time record — the love-team economics this wiki’s Philippine cinema entry documents, carried to its maximum publicity value. (Rappler — September 2019)

3. Studying OFW Narratives in Philippine Cinema

Scholars of migration and media use the Hong Kong setting — a domestic helper and a bartender negotiating love against remittances, family obligations, and exit plans — as the mainstream cinema’s most commercially successful treatment of the overseas Filipino worker. (Wikipedia)

4. Studying Franchise Sequelization

Industry analysts track the five-year gap to Hello, Love, Again as the Filipino franchise case: the 2024 sequel, a Star Cinema–GMA Pictures co-production relocated to Canada, converted the original’s record and unresolved ending into the highest-grossing Filipino film ever made. (Wikipedia — Hello, Love, Again)

Strategies

Date every record claim: the film’s titles were moving targets — highest-grossing Filipino film from September 3, 2019; record lost to Rewind in January 2024; both then dwarfed by the sequel from November 2024 — so cite the figure and the date together. (Wikipedia, Rappler — January 2024)
Keep the denominations separate: the ₱691-million domestic figure, the ₱189.6-million international take, and the ₱880.6-million worldwide total answer different questions; Philippine record lists rank local films on worldwide gross but foreign films on Philippine-only gross — a basis difference that must be stated. (Wikipedia — Highest-grossing films)
Treat grosses as studio-reported: Philippine box-office numbers are released by the producing studio rather than an independent auditor, so attribute figures to Star Cinema’s announcements, as the reporting press itself does. (Rappler — September 2019)
Read the pairing as the product: the film’s central asset was the unprecedented Bernardo-Richards team-up; for casting and marketing study, analyze the star machinery — KathNiel, AlDub, and the “KathDen” portmanteau — alongside the text. (Rappler — September 2019)
Use the franchise, not the single film: pair the 2019 film with its 2024 sequel, since the record books now read the two as one commercial arc spanning Hong Kong and Canada. (Wikipedia — Hello, Love, Again)

Security and Safety Measures

Record hygiene: accurate citation requires keeping three scopes apart — domestic (₱691 million), worldwide (₱880.6 million), and “highest-grossing Filipino film of all time” (dated September 3, 2019 to January 2024) — because flattened retellings routinely inflate or misdate the figures. (Rappler — January 2024, Wikipedia — Highest-grossing films)
Source attribution: since the figures circulate as producer announcements, researchers should preserve the “Star Cinema reported” attribution rather than presenting studio grosses as audited totals. (Rappler — September 2019)
Spoiler discipline: the film’s ending — Joy’s departure for Canada and the couple’s separation — is its structural turn; educational and review contexts should present the premise without narrating the resolution. (Wikipedia)
Representation care in OFW discussion: the domestic-helper storyline is dramatized fiction; claims about the actual conditions of overseas Filipino workers should rest on official labor statistics and migrant-rights reporting, not on the film. (Wikipedia)

Historical Context

The film opened on July 31, 2019 and set its pace immediately: ₱34.4 million on opening day across more than 350 Philippine cinemas, ₱110.8 million within three days, and ₱505.7 million domestically within thirteen. International screenings from August 1 added US$2.1 million in the first week abroad, and the film became the highest-earning Filipino release on record in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. On September 3, 2019, Star Cinema announced that the film had overtaken The Hows of Us — itself a Bernardo vehicle directed by Garcia-Molina — as the highest-grossing Filipino film of all time; Rappler reported the tally as ₱880,603,490 worldwide the following day. (Wikipedia, Rappler — September 2019)

The crown stood for four and a half years. The final denominations settled at ₱691 million domestic and about ₱880 million worldwide, against The Hows of Us’s ₱660 million domestic — until January 2024, when Star Cinema’s own Rewind, the Dingdong Dantes-Marian Rivera Metro Manila Film Festival entry, passed the record on January 17 and finished at ₱924 million worldwide, as this wiki’s Rewind entry documents. The film’s later life ran through honors — Asian Academy Creative Awards in 2020, PMPC Star Awards in 2021, a Luna Award for editing — and an ABS-CBN Books novelization in August 2019. (Rappler — January 2024, Wikipedia)

The franchise then completed its arc. Hello, Love, Again, directed by Cathy Garcia-Sampana and structured as the first major co-production of Star Cinema and GMA Pictures — the cross-network collaboration the 2019 pairing had rehearsed — opened November 13, 2024 in 656 Philippine cinemas, reached ₱1.06 billion by November 23 as the first Filipino film past ₱1 billion, and closed at ₱1.6 billion worldwide by late February 2025, before debuting at number one on Netflix Philippines on February 13, 2025. The sequel’s records — among them the highest local opening day at ₱85 million — now sit above the original’s in the record books this wiki’s Philippine cinema entry maintains. (Wikipedia — Hello, Love, Again, Wikipedia — Highest-grossing films)

Challenges and Controversies

Studio-Reported Figures and the Record Books

The film’s headline figure is a producer announcement, not an audited total: Philippine grosses are released by the producing studio, as the reporting press noted when Star Cinema declared the all-time record in September 2019. The record chain it anchors — and every successor figure — inherits the transparency limits of a system without independent box-office auditing. (Rappler — September 2019)

The Record’s Denominations

Retellings of the film’s record routinely conflate scopes: it was the highest-grossing Filipino film on worldwide gross (₱880.6 million, of which ₱691 million was domestic), a distinction that matters across Philippine record lists, some of which rank local films on worldwide totals and foreign films on Philippine-only grosses. The claim that it held the record “until the 2024 sequel” is imprecise: Rewind took the marks in January 2024, ten months before Hello, Love, Again. (Wikipedia — Highest-grossing films, Rappler — January 2024)

Critical Dissent Within a Positive Reception

The reception was largely favorable — a 4/5 review from Philbert Dy praising Bernardo, Oggs Cruz calling it “fine entertainment” — but carried an attributed dissent: the critic Ysh Cabana argued the film “reinforces middle-class fantasy production” in its treatment of the migrant working class, the standing critique set against its commercial triumph. (Wikipedia)