Choi Dong-hoon


Choi Dong-hoon is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. He ranks as one of the most consistently successful directors working in contemporary Korean cinema, with all five of his films becoming commercial hits -- The Big Swindle attracted 2.12 million viewers, ' at 6.84 million, ' at 6.13 million, The Thieves at 12.9 million, and Assassination at 12.7 million.

Career

After graduating from the prestigious Korean Academy of Film Arts, Choi Dong-hoon first worked as an assistant director on Im Sang-soo's Tears.
After working on the screenplay for two years, Choi made his feature film directorial debut in 2004 with The Big Swindle and single-handedly re-imagined the heist and crime thriller genre into something uniquely Korean. His follow-up ', a gambling flick adapted from Huh Young-man and Kim Se-yeong's manhwa, was the second highest grossing Korean film of 2006, and producer/Sidus FNH CEO Cha Seung-jae praised Choi as "a genius storyteller for his spectacular ability to develop elaborate stories." 2009's ' was lauded as the first Korean fantasy/superhero blockbuster movie, earning Choi a reputation as an artistically innovative and commercially successful writer-director.
He returned to the heist genre in 2012 with the star-studded crime caper The Thieves, which attracted almost 13 million viewers in 70 days to become the second all-time highest grossing movie in Korean film history. In 2015, Choi made his first period film with Assassination, about freedom fighters during Japan's colonial rule, and it was once again a box office hit, crossing the 10 million admissions milestone on the 70th anniversary of South Korean independence.
In 2017, Choi began production on his next film Wiretap, a remake of the 2009 Hong Kong film Overheard. However, production was halted so Kim Woo Bin could undergo treatment for cancer.
Tazza and Thieves leading lady Kim Hye-soo described him as "a genius who also works extremely hard. I think he knows who he is, the exact kind of films that he wants to make, and how to make them."

Filmography