Out talking up his just released “Hellbound” series on Netflix, filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho touched upon the other creation that he’s most famous for – the 2016 zombie action feature “Train to Busan”.
Outside of “Parasite” and “Squid Game,” ‘Busan’ and its 2020 sequel “Peninsula” have been the biggest Korean film/TV hits on a global scale in recent years. Yeon also created an animated prequel film (“Seoul Station”).
Speaking with Variety, he was asked if he has any plans for a third installment in the ‘Busan’ film series and responded:
“Personally, I do have some ideas in terms of further development of what happens after ‘Peninsula.’ But as for whether I will create that into a film, it’s something that I do want to do.
However, because there are a lot of productions that I’m working on currently, I’m thinking that I have to sort of organize the ideas and work on what I have to work on. Up until now I have been someone who’s been an individual creator. But these days I’m thinking that maybe I need to come up with a system in order to really bring all of my creative visions to life..”
He was also asked about the possibility of a TV adaptation of film, or one set within the film’s universe. From the sounds of it, he’s not interested:
“There are a lot of ideas I’ve been tossing around but I personally think that for ‘Train to Busan,’ I would like to continue that as a film series. In Korea, the circumstances are not very favorable to create a series in the Korean language with visuals that are comparable to ‘Train to Busan’ the film and also, you know, I have to work with … the distributor that we started on the original film as well. So I think taking into consideration all of those conditions, a film series would be the most feasible.”
Indeed, he also says the story he’s thinking about after “Peninsula” would be more like “Train to Busan” in that it will unfold in a small and restricted space.