Feb. 8, 2007

Star trio tops Cineclick pic

Lee, Jung, Song join 'Good, the Bad and the Weird'



By DARCY PAQUET

BERLIN — Three of Korea's top male stars will join hands in director Kim Jee-woon's Korean-style Western, "The Good, the Bad and the Weird."

Production company Barunson said that the Sergio Leone-inspired Western will star thesps Lee Byung-heon ("A Bittersweet Life") as "the good"; Jung Woo-sung ("The Restless") as "the bad"; and Song Kang-ho ("The Host") as "the weird."

The casting of the three top actors turns the pic into the biggest showcase of Korea's star system in recent memory.

The $10 million production will be set in Manchuria during the early 1900s, building off a string of Korean genre films from the 1970s that combined the aesthetics of the Western with outlaw movements aligned against Japanese colonial forces. Pic is scheduled to shoot from April to June in China, with a delivery planned for early 2008. Seoul-based seller Cineclick Asia is handling pre-sales at the EFM.

Source: Variety.com, images from empas.com