- Ulan film was produced by Viva Films in partnership with streaming site HOOQ.
- It is HOOQ’s first original film in the Philippines.
- Irene Villamor spent years writing the screenplay. The idea for the character of Maya originated from a five-minute narrative Villamor made as a film student of the University of the Philippines in 1999.
- Villamor cites books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende as some of the works that influenced her while writing the story.
- In the span of more than ten years, Villamor would always return to the screenplay to revise and add ideas as she pleased. Villamor admitted that the concept of the movie was pitched to many different production companies before Viva Films greenlit the project and allowed Villamor to maintain her original vision for the film.
- Villamor sent an earlier version of the script to cinematographer Neil Daza in 2011. In 2018, Villamor again sent the script with the working title “Si Maya, ang Ulan at ang mga Tikbalang” to Daza, who found it easy to say yes to doing the project.
- On June 20, 2018, a story conference was made by Viva Entertainment to announce the new film entitled Ulan which was to star Nadine Lustre and Xian Lim, together with Marco Gumabao and AJ Muhlach. Lim was then removed from the cast and was replaced by Carlo Aquino. The decision to replace Lim was due to scheduling conflict.
- According to Villamor, getting Aquino, whom she had already worked with in the 2018 romantic movie Meet Me in St. Gallen,[9] to do the role was easy.
- The biggest challenges of filming, according to Villamor, were creating the rain effect and deciding how the tikbalang would look like. It took three look tests before the team decided on a final look for the tikbalangs. In the end, the inspiration for the final look came from the papier mache works of the artisans they encountered while filming in Pila, Laguna. This gave the look of the tikbalangs crudeness and innocence, which the team felt was appropriate in the story, it was a young Maya that would see the tikbalangs.
- Principal photography started on August 6, 2018.
- Ulan was released in cinemas on March 13, 2019. The film was released on March 21 in the Middle East and on March 22 in Singapore, Canada, USA, and Australia. In November 2019, the film was screened at the San Diego Asian Film Festival under the Asia Pop! category at the Edwards Mira Mesa Stadium in San Diego, United States. On February 15, 2020, the film also premiered at the Copenhagen Asian Film Festival 2020.
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