the film-making climate of malaysia proved unsuitable to filming there because of arbitrary government film censorship, so williams decided to film "darkest night" on locations in the philippines. this action, of course, required some location-related rewriting of the script. the chinese characters in the story became filipino, and the chinese new year became christmas. the characters and general family dynamic in the story remained the same, and the author only made changes necessary to accommodate a different culture, race and nationality. as a result, the final version of the "darkest night " screenplay came about.