Korea's Hollywood-invested film to be released for 1st time

By Yun Suh-young

Sanford Panitch, head of Fox International Productions / Courtesy of 20th Century Fox Korea

Korea’s fast-growing film sector could soon become a magnet for global investment, according to Sanford Panitch, head of Fox International Productions (FIP), who expressed confidence about the prospects of the firm’s first local project.

Fox is the first foreign company to fully finance the production of a Korean movie, “Running Man.” Panitch says the global entertainment giant has a number of more Korean works in the pipeline.

The Korean movie industry seems to be enjoying a full-blown renaissance at the moment, with local theaters combining for new audience records month after month and an increasing number of Korean films enjoying critical acclaim abroad. This provides a critical investment opportunity for companies like Fox, Panitch said.

Running Man, the soon-to-be-released action film, stars Shin Ha-kyun in the main role, as a man who is wrongfully accused of murder after witnessing a person’s death and is forced into a life on the run. Panitch said he was impressed with the level of filmmaking here _ how the intensity in action is balanced by fully-developed characters and deep-cutting drama.

“We were very impressed with the concept of trying to make a film that would be pushing the action quotient down in a realistic way in Seoul itself,” said Panitch in a news conference held at a theater in Seoul.

“And the father-son story very much appealed to us all as the emotional core to the film. For those two reasons, Running Man felt like a good start for us.”

FIP is a global production company, created by Fox to be more involved in investing and producing local films in markets where a large percentage of films are not in English. FIP has so far financed 50 non-English language films in more than 11 countries.

Fox was the earliest among foreign entertainment giants to actively engage in investment opportunities in Korea. It partially invested in the crime thriller “Hwanghae,” the 2010 mega-hit. Park Chan-wook’s Hollywood debut, “Stoker,” is also distributed by Fox.

Panitch said Fox could have been involved with the Korean film sector earlier had it not been for obstacles, which come in a country that has been stuck between protecting the local movie market from foreign competition and nurturing it into a global industry.

“It's taken some time. Finally we have our first Korean film. One of the great aspects of us making this film in Korea came from the support of Korean Film Council (KOFIC),” he said.

“KOFIK has shown support through an incentive program and I really appreciate not only this and the backing for the film but also the long term relationship which will make us continue to make films in Korea in association with it.”

Running Man was the first film handpicked by KOFIC after the film council introduced an incentive program to boost the financing of Korean films and help them find a global stage.”

“I hope to be able to fulfill KOFIC's hopes for global expansion of Korean films and this will be a beginning of that process,” said Panitch.

“This is a great opportunity for Korean movies to expand in the global network through co-production of films with a foreign investor. It also creates jobs opportunities for about 430 Korean film makers to work for five months,” said KOFIC Chairman Kim Eui-suk, also present at the news conference.

Panitch said his company has a number of Korean film projects in development in its script stages and hopes to be able to announce a second film very soon.

As for the Hollywood distribution of this movie, he said, “For Fox being a worldwide distributor, we want the film to be most successful in Korea where it is set and the language is spoken. At the same time, if we see an opportunity for the film in other parts of the world, we plan to take advantage of that whether it is U.S. audiences or other territories.”