“Ang Panday” will go down in history as king of the 35th Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) in both critical and commercial aspects.

After clinching the Best Picture plum at the MMFF awards ceremony, the Carlo Caparas epic remains the highest grossing film in the festival as of Jan. 2, 2010, raking in a total of P80.8 million in ticket sales since Dec. 25.
 
The action-fantasy flick's biggest contender, the vampire comedy outing “Ang Darling Kong Aswang,” which took over the top spot for three days -- from day three to day five of the film fest -- now lags behind it with a P4.8 million-peso difference.

Entering the top three is “I Love You Goodbye,” one notch up in the latest tally. Adjudged the "Second Best Picture," the film registered sales of P69.8 million. Switching places with the romantic drama is the 11th installment of “Shake, Rattle, & Roll,” which took in P66.2 million.

The second half of the ranking includes Best Director Joel Lamangan’s “Mano Po 6” with P33.8 million, succeeded by the Comedy King Dolphy starrer, “Nobody, Nobody But Juan” with P28 million. Far behind in last place is “Wapakman,” which generated a mere P2 million.

According to Ric Camaligan, president of the National Cinemas Association of the Philippines and member of the Executive Committee of the Metro Manila Film Festival, the box-office success of “Panday” largely contributed to its getting the MMFF First Best Picture award since “kalahati ng [criteria for] Best Picture ay galing sa box-office. It’s one of the reasons aside from being a good, quality movie.”

The MMFF committee hopes to reap a total of P500 million in order to surpass 2008’s recorded sales of P351 million. So far, the accumulated sales of the seven films amount to P356.6 million.