South Korean zombie flick Train to Busan made a big splash in 2016, and now New Line Cinema is remaking it for a wider audience.
Made for under $10 million, South Korean zombie flick Train to Busan ended up making nearly $100 million at the international box office when it came out in 2016. A zombie apocalypse movie set mainly aboard a train (to Busan), the movie was kinetic, exciting and scary, and studios immediately started competing with each other to get a piece of it.
In the end, New Line Cinema won and set about remaking the movie for a wider audience. Now, Deadline reports that they’re talking to a potential director: Headshot and The Night Comes For Us director Timo Tjahjanto.
Train to Busan already has a sequel out, 2020’s Peninsula, which director Yeon Sang-ho — who also helmed the first movie — hastened to point out wasn’t actually a sequel, but merely “happens in the same universe.”
And that right there should tell you why studios are eager to be a part of the Train to Busan experience. Nothing gets a modern movie studio more excited than the prospect of having their own shared universe of content, and they’ll snap at any opportunity to build one.
But we probably have a while to wait before we see if they’re successful. Hey, do you think zombie movies produced after the pandemic will feel different? Stay tuned for all of this.
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