Don Lee: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: C.S. Lee (Dexter, Avatar: The Last Airbender) has joined the cast of Netflix’s Cobra Kai for its sixth and final season in an iconic role originating from The Karate Kid, Deadline has learned.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief No Maori Allowed, directed by Corinna Hunziger was named the winner of the Pasifika Award and recipient of a $5,000 cash prize at the Hawaii International Film Festival. It recounts the story of a teacher who unearths a secret past in the town of Pukekohe. Thet causes M?ori community figures to come forward to share personal stories that shaped their lives.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International “D.P.” creator Kim Bo-tong has signed with CAA for representation. The Korean screenwriter, who is also known as Kim Ho Yeol, is the creator and co-writer of the webtoon “D.P.” which was adapted into the Netflix military drama. The show, which premiered in 2021, earned multiple awards in various categories at the Baeksang Arts Awards in 2022, establishing it as one of the top Korean dramas of the year. “D.P.” returns later this month for Season 2. The series follows a team of Korean military police who are tasked with catching deserters. (Military service is mandatory for men between the ages of 18 and 35 in South Korea.)

EXCLUSIVE: Korean multi-hyphenate powerhouse Don Lee (aka Ma Dong-seok) is set to star in and produce an English-language feature adaptation of New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sansbury Smith’s dystopian sci-fi novel series Hell Divers. The film will draw from the first three books in the series whose first installment was published by Blackstone in 2016; there are 10 books in total. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean blockbuster “The Roundup: No Way Out” suffered a 50% week-on-week decline, but it was still strong enough to see a pair of Hollywood newcomers. The third part of the Don Lee-starring Roundup franchise, “No Way Out” earned $5.16 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council. It accounted for a 42% share of the market and attracted 650,000 additional spectators.

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track… So, we’re going to do the hard work for you.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean-produced crime action film “The Roundup: No Way Out” dominated proceedings at the South Korean cinema box office for the second successive weekend. Its massive haul now totals $60 million. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” opened with a puny second place. The Friday to Sunday period saw the film bring in $10.4 million from 1.32 million ticket sales and account for a 72% market share, according to data from Kobis, the data tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). Including pre-release previews and strong midweek sales, the film has now rushed on to an aggregate of $59.6 million that has been earned from 7.78 million spectators.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Crime action film “The Roundup: No Way Out” dominated the South Korean box office on its official opening weekend with a thumping $21.9 million performance. The film, the third in a franchise that pits a heavy-fisted cop, portrayed by Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee), against colorfully devious rogues, crushed all competing titles by taking an 88% market share. In terms of admissions, it attracted 2.82 million into cinemas between Friday and Sunday. The film’s official opening was on Wednesday (May 31). But it also enjoyed wide previews through much of the preceding week. Adding in the weekday takings and the preview activity, “The Roundup: No Way Out” has a current aggregate of $34.1 million and has sold a total of 4.51 million tickets, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council.

Eternals actor Ma Dong-seok (also known as Don Lee) as their profile pictures to get better customer service.Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that several Chinese social media users have started a trend of switching their profile pictures to photos of Korean-American actor Ma Dong-seok, best known for his roles as Gilgamesh in Marvel’s Eternals and Yoon Sang-hwa in Train To Busan.According to users on the recommendation app XiaoHongShu, using Ma in their avatars helped them resolve issues more quickly and got them better online customer service.One user, per The Guardian, claimed that they were ignored by customer service when using the photo of a girl as their profile image.  “After changing to the avatar of Ma Dong-seok, the customer service attitude was much more polite, and they even took the initiative to make up the price difference,” they said.Another user shared that changing her profile picture to a photo of Ma led to her property manager resolving an issue that she had previously raised several times in a matter of minutes.The trend has since spread to Weibo, a social network similar to Twitter, and social messaging app WeChat, which are two of the most widely-used social media platforms in China.

South Korea’s entertainment industry has postponed several events in the wake of the tragic crowd surge that killed more than 150 people in Seoul’s Itaewon district on Saturday night. The country is in a week-long period of mourning. 

Rebecca Souw Still riding high on the success of “The Roundup,” Korean indie film producer and seller K-Movie Entertainment, is showcasing a slate of 16 movies at the Asian and Contents Film Market, part of the Busan International Film Festival.

Campaigners and locals have banded together to stop the closure of a 300-year-old pathway alongside the River Irwell in Salford.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefProduction has begun on “The Roundup: No Way Out,” a sequel to record-breaking Korean action film “The Roundup.” Korean American actor Don Lee (“The Eternals”), also known as Ma Dong-seok, returns to the franchise as star and producer.The cast of “No Way Out” also includes Lee Jun-hyuk (“Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds,” “Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days,” TV’s “Stranger”) and Japanese actor Aoki Munetaka (“Rurouni Kenshin” series, “True Mothers,” “Silence”). The directing reins are once again held by Lee Sang-yong.The production is a re-collaboration between Don Lee’s Bigpunch Pictures, Hong Film and B.A.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefCJ ENM Hong Kong has secured the first and exclusive Pay TV, pay-per-view, video-on-demand and over-the-top (OTT) rights in key Southeast Asia markets to a slate of current and upcoming South Korean films. These are to play on the tvN Movies channel in Southeast Asia.

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures is set to remake critically acclaimed South Korean crime thriller The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil with original star Don Lee (aka Ma Dong-seok) reprising his lead role as a gang boss looking for redemption in the studio’s U.S. version.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Top Gun Maverick” flew to the top of the box office charts in South Korea over the weekend, with a supersonic $9.6 million opening loop. It replaced “The Witch: Part 2 The Other One,” which had been top dog for only a week.Tom Cruise, a regular visitor to Korea, jetted into Seoul with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and co-stars Miles Teller, Glen Powell and Greg Tarzan Davis to goose the movie’s takeoff in the country. Cruise professed himself grateful for the fan’s warm reception and talked up the importance of in-person visits to the cinema.Sub-distributed in Korea by Lotte Entertainment, the film opened on Wednesday and played on more than 1,900 screens.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Broker,” the art house drama film that appeared in competition in Cannes last month had a bright start in Korean cinemas, picking up over $6 million in its opening foray. Its score, however, was not enough to unseat mainstream crime actioner “The Roundup” from the weekend’s top spot.“Broker” earned $4.13 million over the Friday to Sunday weekend, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). That put it second behind “The Roundup” with a weekend score of $6.69 million.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticOne of the most enjoyable South Korean action movies in recent years, 2017’s “The Outlaws” was a deft mix of brutal gang-warfare thrills and Keystone Cops comedics. It provided an ideal vehicle for Ma Dong-seok aka Don Lee (“Train to Busan” and “Eternals”) as the police investigator whose hit-first-ask-permission-later methods regularly got the job done while infuriating his superiors.That burly protagonist and his sidekicks are back in “The Roundup,” which despite a different directorial (newbie Lee Sang-yong replacing the prior edition’s Kang Yoon-seong) and writing crew, maintains the original’s strengths.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefLocally-produced action franchise movie “The Roundup” continued to stomp its way across the South Korean box office for a second weekend, giving theatres their best month of the year.Over the weekend. “The Roundup” rounded up $15.4 million from 2,520 screens nationwide, according to KOBIS, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefLocally-produced action franchise movie “The Roundup” blasted its way into the record books and elevated Korean box office to levels not seen for more than two years.The film enjoyed record levels of pre-sales, significant teaser activity the previous weekend and opened officially on Wednesday.Over the weekend proper it rounded up $21.1 million from 2,500 screens nationwide, according to KOBIS, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).Its five-day cumulative (including the previews) is an astonishing $29.1 million, which makes it the second biggest film of the year, behind only “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and by far the highest grossing Korean film of the year to date. Those figures were earned from 2.5 million spectators between Friday and Sunday, and 3.5 million in five days.

Kumail Nanjiani is looking great on the red carpet!