“Train to Busan” Director Yeon Sang-ho to Direct His First English-Language Film, “35th Street”

Item: "Train to Busan" Director Yeon Sang-ho to Direct His First English-Language Film, "35th Street"
Author: Edward Moran

by Edward Moran

Yeon Sang-ho, the prolific Korean director acclaimed for Train to Busan (2016), is poised to make his first English-language film for TriStar Pictures. Titled 35th Street, the movie will also be in the action/horror genre.

Yeon will be directing the film and co-writing it with Ryu Yong-jae. No further information is available about plot details or release date. 35th Street will be produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and WOW POINT. a global content production company based in Seoul that creates original local content for Korea, Japan, and the United States.

Train to Busan, Yeon’s first live-action film, grossed more than $98 million worldwide on an $8 million budget and established Yeon’s reputation in the new Korean cinema. According to the official synopsis, the movie is “a harrowing zombie horror-thriller that follows a group of terrified passengers fighting their way through a countrywide viral outbreak, trapped on a suspicion-filled, blood-drenched bullet train ride to the Safe Zone…which may or may not still be there.”

After graduating from Sangmyung University with a degree in art, Yeon made a number of animated short films, including Megalomania of D (1997), D-Day (2000), and The Hell (2002). He established his own production house, Studio Dadashow, in 2004. Before coming to global prominence with Train to Busan, Yeon had made two adult animated films, The King of Pigs (2011) and The Fake (2013), the former being the first Korean animation to be invited to the Cannes Film Festival.

In 2016, Yeon also created an animated prequel to Train to Busan, titled Seoul Station. A sequel titled Peninsula was released in 2020 and became an official selection at Cannes that year, grossing $45 million. Yeon is also known for directing all six episodes of his TV series Hellbound and the film Jung-E, which both achieved number-one status on Netflix. His most recent Netflix release was Parasyte: The Grey series, an adaptation of an iconic Japanese manga.