After graduating from the prestigious Korean Academy of Film Arts, Choi Dong-hoon first worked as an assistant director on Im Sang-soo's Tears (he subsequently appeared in acting cameos in several of Im's films).[2]
After working on the screenplay for two years, Choi made his feature film directorial debut in 2004 with The Big Swindle and single-handedly re-imagined the heist and crime thriller genre into something uniquely Korean. His follow-up Tazza: The High Rollers, a gambling flick adapted from Huh Young-man and Kim Se-yeong's manhwa, was the second highest grossing Korean film of 2006, and producer/Sidus FNHCEO Cha Seung-jae praised Choi as "a genius storyteller for his spectacular ability to develop elaborate stories." 2009's Jeon Woo-chi: The Taoist Wizard was lauded as the first Korean fantasy/superhero blockbuster movie, earning Choi a reputation as an artistically innovative and commercially successful writer-director.[3]
He returned to the heist genre in 2012 with the star-studded crime caper The Thieves,[4] which attracted almost 13 million viewers in 70 days to become the second all-time highest grossing movie in Korean film history.[5][6][7][8]Tazza and Thieves leading lady Kim Hye-soo described him as "a genius who also works extremely hard. I think he knows who he is, the exact kind of films that he wants to make, and how to make them."[2]
In 2017, Choi began production on his next film Wiretap, a remake of the 2009 Hong Kong film Overheard.[11] However, production was halted so Kim Woo Bin could undergo treatment for cancer.[12] At the end of 2019, the director was then reported to be working on a two-part science fiction film.[13] The first part titled Alienoid which depicts a story unfolding as the door of time open between late Goryeo and the present day, when aliens appear, was released in July 2022.[14]
_VIP%EC%8B%9C%EC%82%AC_%ED%9B%84%EA%B8%B0_%EC%98%81%EC%83%81_(%EC%B5%9C%EB%8F%99%ED%9B%88).jpg)
