Lee Jung-jae: Wanted to create a new type of spy film

Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae discusses writing and directing his first espionage thriller, Hunt

Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae said that his directorial debut Hunt is a mix of his decades-long experience as an actor and his dream of making a new type of spy movie.

Hunt is a story about two rival intelligence agents in South Korea, Park Pyong-ho (Lee) and Lee Jung-do (Jung Woo-sung), who separately chase a North Korean spy leaking top secret information that could jeopardise national security. The two end up discovering a plot to assassinate the South Korean president. 

It premièred as part of the non-competition Midnight Screening section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival held in May. It is the first film for which Lee has gone behind the camera in his 30-year-long career, during which he has starred in about 40 films and TV series. He also wrote the script of his maiden directorial venture. “Although I’ve been in this world for a long time, I thought writing and directing are different from acting. So I hesitated a lot. But I decided to take charge of this project and dived into it,” Lee said in a press conference.

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For his directorial debut, he said that he spent most of pre-production, which lasted for four years, in writing the script. He tried to build emotions of each character who confronts unknown and unseen spies, and combines them with his own style of suspense, thrill and action from the beginning.

“As many male actors do, I used to enjoy espionage films. As a director, I wanted to create a new type of spy film with Hunt,” said Lee, who rose to international fame with the global sensation, Squid Game.

“Before going into an action sequence, I help actors build their emotions and get deeply immersed in the situation. I think this emotional building explains the violence and rage behind the action scenes.”

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