Jo Koy has risen to stardom simply by being Jo — or as his mom calls him, Josep.

The Filipino American stand-up comic has garnered a loyal following among the Asian American and Pacific Islander community thanks to his candidly hilarious stories about growing up with a mom who immigrated from the Philippines, her disappointment that he didn’t become a nurse and her belief in the “cure-all” Vicks VapoRub, among other cultural norms. He’s sold out arenas and won fans over with popular comedy specials, and ahead of the release of “Easter Sunday” — his first starring role in a film — he’s all smiles.

“Oh, I feel so good. This is a dream come true,” Koy told The Chronicle, beaming as he sat comfortably in the top row of the Century 20 Daly City multiplex after the first public screening of his movie, which hits theaters nationwide Friday, Aug. 5. “All I wanted was a stand-up career, and I would dream about making a movie. … I’m living a dream.”

And it’s not lost on him or the cast and crew that “Easter Sunday” is the first major Hollywood-backed film — green-lit by Steven Spielberg himself, according to filmmakers — about a Filipino American family, with a majority Filipino American cast and Asian Americans behind the lens.

Directed by Broken Lizard comedy troupe star Jay Chandrasekhar (“Super Troopers,” “Beer Fest”), the DreamWorks/Universal feature stars a nearly all-Asian cast of seasoned and up-and-coming talents, fromTia Carrere(“Wayne’s World”) and Eva Noblezada (“Yellow Rose,”“Luck”) to Eugene Cordero (“Kong: Skull Island”) and the Bay Area’s own Joey Guila (“The Fabulous Filipino Brothers”).

“There was a moment on set where I cut the camera and said, ‘You know, you guys are the whole cast and you’re all Filipino,” said Chandrasekhar, who also makes a cameo as Koy’s slick agent, about the large extended family at the focus of the film. “This is an incredible moment.”

Tia Carrere excited to ‘finally play Filipino’ in Jo Koy’s ‘Easter Sunday’

“复活节”是一个自我感觉良好的家庭喜剧sibling rivalry, young love and the complicated dynamics of father-son and mother-son relationships. Evenbalikbayanboxes — the big cardboard boxes full of goodies Filipino American families send back to relatives in the Philippines — play prominent roles in the 98-minute film. Moreover, it’s set in Daly City, where, as Koy jokes, the fog rolls in because all the Filipinos have their rice cookers on.

The film focuses on Joe Valencia (Koy), a busy dad who has missed out on a lot of his son’s important milestones, from a school meeting to sports games. Partly to reconnect with his teenage son, Valencia decides to drive up from Los Angeles to Daly City for Easter Sunday at the behest of his mom, who doesn’t understand his career as a struggling comic and aspiring actor.

The film opens with Valencia doing a stand-up act at Hollywood’s Laugh Factory, where he riffs about being half Filipino and half white, just as Koy is in real life (he was born Joseph Glenn Herbert in Tacoma, Wash., to a Filipina mother, whom he often refers to in his work, and a white father who served in the U.S. Air Force).

Koy isn’t from the Bay Area but flew here last month to celebrate in the film’s setting. A few days before the “Easter Sunday” red carpet premiere at Hollywood’s iconic TCL Chinese Theatre, the film debuted at Century 20 Daly City to an invite-only crowd. Local Filipino Americans in media, public service, musicians and artists all came out in support. Juslyn Manalo, the city’s first Filipina American City Council member, even proclaimed July 22, 2022, as Jo Koy Day, and San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa presented the comic with a plaque with an oversized key to the city.

“I am at a loss for words,” Koy said at the City Hall ceremony, then quipped: “I am going to put this on my keychain.”

The local love for Koy extends to the movie itself. It takes place in Daly City (though mostly filmed in Vancouver), with Serramonte Mall and other Bay Area landmarks making appearances.

“It’s an honor to have Daly City represented in a major Hollywood studio film and to show the world that we are what Sonny Vergara, in his book, refers to as ‘Pinoy Capital,’ ” Mayor Rod Daus-Magbual, who was unable to attend the city event, told The Chronicle in a separate interview. “We represent one of the largest Filipino communities in the state and in the nation. It reveals the presence of our community where we are often seen as invisible.”

The film was written by Ken Cheng, whose family immigrated from the Philippines in the mid-’80s and landed in Daly City. This is his first feature film — his TV writing and producing credits include “Wilfred” and “Sin City Saints,” respectively — though he has other projects in the works. He’s currently writing film adaptations of “The Great Chinese Art Heist” and “Chateau Sucker,” and working on the forthcoming HBO series “House of Chow.”

“Easter Sunday” is produced partly by Crab Club, which started as a creative incubator and is now a production label with Cheng, TV writer Jessica Gao (“Silicon Valley”) and standup comedian/actor Jimmy O. Yang (who also makes a cameo in the film) as producers.

Cheng said he met Koy at a dinner hosted by producer Dan Lin, where they started chatting.

“I recognized my own family in his stories,” Cheng said about being a fan of Koy’s comedy.

While Cheng is ethnically Chinese, he and his parents are from the Philippines and still have family there. When the Cheng family first arrived in the U.S. when he was just 8 years old, they settled in Daly City. Though the family lived there only three years before moving down the Peninsula, the city made an impression, he said. He wanted to put Daly City in the film as a cultural hub, in “this very vibrant community of Filipino Americans.”

Meanwhile, Koy had already come up with the idea of a film based on his life and his Filipino family that would take place on Easter Sunday, which was always a big family event. Following Koy’s 2019 Netflix comedy special “Coming in Hot,” Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment had reached out about a possible movie, saying Spielberg was a fan.

Koy notes he was inspired by “Friday,” Ice Cube’s 1995 comedy about South Central L.A.

“这只是如此深思熟虑,”他如何说“Friday” takes place in one day. “I always thought it was such a great concept. Plus, the movie was great and you got to see so many characters. It was a Black family, but I got all the jokes. When he’s eating the cereal, there was no milk and his mom says put water in it — my mom says that. I was relating to that.”

So Koy pitched his “Easter Sunday” idea to the Amblin team, and soon the project began gaining momentum.

Cheng wrote the draft during the pandemic lockdown, shortly after the birth of his first child. Often, during his daughter’s naps, he worked on merging the Easter Sunday concept with Koy’s stand-up bits. The Amblin team told him Spielberg himself read the script and green-lit it based on Cheng’s first draft.

He and Koy “FaceTimed each other crying, like we can’t believe it’s happening,” Cheng recalled. “It was just such a tremendous faith being shown, and I think it’s a testament to Jo as a performer and a star, and someone who just really garners everyone’s attention.”

In casting, they aimed high. Stars include heavyweights like Tiffany Haddish, who plays a Daly City police officer and former girlfriend of Koy’s Valencia. Carrere plays Tita Theresa, foil to Valencia’s mom’s character Susan, played by Lydia Gaston. Lou Diamond Phillips makes a cameo.

Cheng said that the auditions for the film showed him “there are a lot of talented actors in the Filipino American community and AAPI community in general.”

Koy’s dream of debuting “Easter Sunday,” shot during the height of COVID, in theaters in time for the holiday was in question as the pandemic lingered. But going directly to streaming — even through services like Netflix, which has been a major platform for Koy’s work (his fourth Netflix comedy special is set to drop in September) — wasn’t an option as Koy was adamant about taking the film to the big screen.

“这是一起而是一个家庭,爱一个d cries and laughs together. It’s a basic ingredient for any family movie, so why wouldn’t this have a chance to be on a silver screen like everybody else?” he said. “We deserve that.”

Koy gets teary-eyed when he talks about the autobiographical parts of the film, particularly about the father-son relationship. Koy remembers feeling guilty for being absent when he was touring on the road, despite making sure that Jo Jr. was very much a part of his stand-up material.

“I missed birthdays,” he said. “I had to. I’m a comic; either I feed the family or we starve. And there’s this thing I’m doing, which is chasing a dream. Unfortunately, there was a lot of sacrifice. I felt like s— when I was on the road, but I had to.”

But Koy emphasizes that this moment is not just about him, saying he wants to see more diverse representation on the big screen.

“I’m not just talking about Filipinos, I’m talking about everybody,” Koy said. “I want to see more stories about other ethnicities and other cultures because that’s what we’re living in right now.”

“Audiences very much want to see themselves onscreen, because it means to them they’re part of the country, that they matter,” Chandrasekhar added. “The dream is alive when you see yourself up there.”

As with his film inspiration “Friday,” Koy hopes that everyone can relate to “Easter Sunday.”

“I wanted to tell a story about my family, but most importantly, I didn’t want to just let people know that only Filipinos can get this,” Koy said. “At the end of the movie, we can all just look at each other and go, ‘Yo, my mom did the same thing to me,’ or ‘my son did the same,’ and that’s what it’s all about. We all want to be heard.”

“Easter Sunday”(PG-13) is in theaters Friday, Aug. 5.

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