AlDub no. 1 choice to play 'Meteor Garden' Filipino remake

MANILA, Philippines — Phenomenal love team AlDub, composed of Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza, topped the recent survey by Philstar.com on who Filipinos want to play the lead roles if the Philippines will have its own version of the hit Asianovela “Meteor Garden.” 

The Kapuso actor got 53 percent of the votes from Twitter netizens to play the lead role of Dao Ming Si while Kapamilya actor Daniel Padilla followed with 25 percent. Kapamilya actor James Reid received 16 percent of the votes while Kapuso actor Ruru Madrid got six percent. 

The other part of the AlDub love team dominated the survey with 92 percent of the netizens wanting her to play the role of Shan Cai. Kapamilya singer Sarah Geronimo and actress Nadine Lustre only got four percent and two percent respectively, while Kapuso actress Barbie Forteza only got two percent.

For the role of Hua Ze Lei, new Star Magic talent Donny Pangilinan got 38 percent of the netizens’ votes, followed by Joshua Garcia who 26 percent, Gil Cuerva’s 23 percent and Edward Barber’s 13 percent. 

Netizens on Facebook and Twitter also tossed in some other possible actors for the role: Kim Chiu as Shan Chai; Joseph Marco or Xian Lim for Dao Ming Si; and Tony Labrusca and Enrique Gil as members of the F4.

"Meteor Garden" is a 2001 Taiwanese TV series starring Barbie Shu, Jerry Yan, Vic Zhou, Vanness Wu and Ken Chu. Since arriving to the Philippine shore, the series hit Filipino viewers by storm topping the TV ratings. 

In November 2017, GMA has announced its casting call for the Philippine version of “Boys Over Flowers,” the South Korean version of “Meteor Garden.”

This year, China will release its remake of the well-loved series with Shun Yue as Shan Chai while the F4 will be played by Dylan Wang, Darren Chen, Connor Leong and Caesar Wu.

Meanwhile, Maine’s guesting on GMA 7’s “Daig Kayo ng Lola Ko” on Sunday trended on Twitter with over 1.32 million tweets with the hashtag #MaineAsLauraPatola. The “Eat Bulaga” host is really the queen of Twitter in the country as the social media site has named her the top woman celebrity on Twitter in the Philippines for the months of January to April.