Esmail Corp, K Period Media & Korean Filmmaker Kim Jee-Woon Team For Adaptation Of Thriller Novel ‘The Hole’

EXCLUSIVE: Producers Esmail Corp (Mr. Robot) and K Period Media (Manchester By The Sea) are teaming up with Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon (The Age Of Shadows) on an English and Korean-language movie adaptation of novel The Hole.

Psychological thriller The Hole by Korean author Hye-Young Pyun charts the story of Ogi who wakes from a coma after causing a major car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Ogi is neglected and left alone in his bed but soon notices his mother-in-law in their abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant, and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started. As he tries to escape, Ogi discovers more about his wife and his own role in the troubled state of their relationship.

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Winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award and named by Time as one of the year’s top thrillers, the novel has been compared to Stephen King’s Misery and Korean novel The Vegetarian.

We understand the adaptation will be set between Korea and the U.S. with dialogue in English and Korean. Kim’s company Anthology Studios will also produce, and the filmmaker is working on the script with Christopher Chen, who recently scripted K Period’s Sundance thriller The Accidental Getaway Driver. Andy Sorgie is producing for K Period Media.

Anthology is the Korean company co-founded by Kim, former Warner Bros exec Jay Choi and Parasite star Song Kang-ho.

Genre specialist Kim Jee-woon is known for Cannes titles such as Cobweb and The Good The Bad And The Weird as well as Venice Film Festival historical thriller The Age Of Shadows, which made more than $50M globally. He made his English-language debut and only English-language film to date with 2013 action pic The Last Stand starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot and Homecoming outfit Esmail Corp recently made Julia Roberts Netflix pic Leave The World Behind. Manchester By The Sea and Suspiria producer K Period Media is in post on thriller Caddo Lake with Dylan O’Brien.

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