But at the same time, we wanted to make sure that none of the things that happened in this universe would remind you of anything that happened in our real world. They’re people you see in the real world.
We kind of just brainstormed all the ideas that we could think of, and then tried to pick from those, thinking, “What can we bring together to create into a single storyline?” The characters that you see in “Hellbound” are very grounded. So demonstrations and the prophecies, and then we thought about the kinds of things that would happen in this supernatural or created universe. When my partner Kyu-Seok and I were planning and thinking of the story, and creating the process, we thought of a universe that had very supernatural things happening. Is there any sort of local, societal commentary being made here? What was the personal resonance to you? “Hellbound” is such an interesting meditation on good and evil. However, the webtoons started to on the platform when I was actually shooting the film “Peninsula.” Before that, we had just been talking about, but after began on the platform, Netflix and I began to discuss creating it into a live series. During the process of planning and creating the cartoon for “Hellbound,” we did talk about wanting to create a live-action series. The short animation was in 2002, and then the webtoon actually began about two years ago on Naver, with co-creator and cartoon artist Choi Kyu-Seok. In an interview with Variety, working with a translator provided by Netflix, Yeon discusses the origins of “Hellbound,” plans for season 2 and teases a potential third installment in his zombie trilogy that falls somewhere between “Train to Busan” and “Peninsula.” Tell me a bit about the process of adapting the animated film and webtoon into the live-action show.
The show is currently the streamer’s top non-English language series globally, just ahead of that other Korean TV sensation “Squid Game” in third place.
The latter provided a handy proof of concept for a live-action series that was ultimately commissioned by Netflix. Similarly, “Hellbound” began life as a two-part animated film before being extended into a webtoon for Korean digital platform Naver.