PRODUCTION NOTES:
GREEN FISH began as experimental gathering of four people. LEE Chang-dong had come up with a script that just had to be produced. Well-known director and actor YEO Kyun-dong, theatre/film actor and producer MYUNG Kay-nam, and actor MOON Sung-keun joined forces to form what would eventually become EAST FILM. This 'gang of four' at first jokingly called themselves the 'Support Committee for the Debut of Director LEE Chang-dong', believing not only in the strength of the script, but in LEE Chang-dong's directing potential. Together the four started planning the film. But in a climate dominated by Hollywood hits and domestic films financed according to the interests of the big Korean conglomerates, GREEN FISH was almost doomed to become yet another in the long line of the scripts that 'should have been made'. Would-be investors repeatedly handed back the script, saying that it was a good story but too risky at the box office, especially with a new director, despite the line-up of the big names for the film's cast. Eventually the production which cost over USD 1.7M cranked in August 1996 and was completed 4 months later in December. It had opened to a critical success at forty cinemas around the country on 7 February 1997 and has drawn an audience of over 300,000 as at the end of March. It is viewed as a success given the environment where the cinema-goers in Korea are mostly young people in their 20's, and the target audience of this film is people in their mid-30's and older. |
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Film Facts:
