Stream K-Dramas at OnDemandKorea

He Knows how to Sell Celluloid

by Hwang Su-cheol

In the Korean movie industry, dominated by comedies, Kim Dong-joo, the CEO of Showist and the executive producer of a movie "Old boy", is making waves.
Kim thought that "Old boy", a 1997 series of comic books by Nobuaki Minegishi of Japan, would make a good movie, and bought the copyrights for W5 million. He promised the Japanese company that if the work was actually made into a movie, he would pay an additional W10 million more. The Japanese company raked in W15 million.

Kim wanted Park Chan-wook for the director and Choi Min-sik for the lead role: fortunately, Park and Choi were more than willing to work together.

When the movie was finished, Kim re-exported the movie's copyrights to Japanese Toshiba for W2.6 billion (US$2.2 million). Kim profited hugely from his transactions with Japan.

In the 24th Blue Dragon Film Awards, Old boy won in three fields -- best actor, best supporting actress, and best director -- and "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring", another movie in Kim he invested, won the award for best movie. Kim is well known for his judgment. He was one of the major investors in the movie Friend, and the musical "Phantom of the Opera". Kim said that he would continue to work on developing various ideas and subjects to diversify the genres in the Korean movie industry.

Advertisement

❎ Try Ad-free