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Entertainment powerhouse Cj Enm has recruited seasoned executive Jung Hyun-joo as its head of film business. Jung, who previously served as CEO of Korean film company Acemaker, steps into the role effective immediately.

The appointment brings a heavyweight industry player to Cj Enm’s film operations. Jung’s resume includes her pivotal role behind Bong Joon Ho’s monster hit “The Host” during her tenure at Chungeorahm Film, where she managed production and marketing for what became one of Korea’s highest-grossing films.

Jung brings more than two decades of experience across production, financing and distribution. Her background includes spearheading Korean distribution for international blockbusters like “The Lord of the Rings,” “Shaolin Soccer” and “Kill Bill” while working at Taewon Entertainment, where she helped introduce over 100 international titles to Korean audiences.

During her stint at Showbox in the 2010s, Jung guided investment and production for commercial and critical successes including...

South Korean star Don Lee has revealed that four more films are being planned for the hit Roundup franchise and confirmed he is lined up to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The action star is in Berlin with The Roundup: Punishment, which will receive its world premiere tonight (February 23) as a Berlinale Special Gala.

It is the fourth instalment in a series that began with The Outlaws in 2017 before sequel The Roundup became the top grossing film at the Korean box office in 2022 with takings of nearly $100m (KRW131.3bn) – bringing audiences back to cinemas post-pandemic – and The Roundup: No Way Out...

In Berlin with “The Roundup: Punishment,” part four of the action movie series that he created and stars in, the larger-than-life Korean American Don Lee finds himself simultaneously in multiple timely and lucrative businesses.

These include the Marvel superhero business, the Korea-to-Hollywood remake business, “The Roundup” franchise and its multiple spinoff possibilities. Lee may even be in the business of saving Korean cinema, which is currently having one of its periodic wobbles.

“What we have to do is make really, really fun entertaining movies. Put them in cinemas, so that everyone will come back to the theaters. One of my goals is to entertain more people,” Lee told Variety on the fringes of the Berlin Film Festival, where “Punishment” has its world premiere as an out-of-competition gala screening.

The second element of the franchise, “The Roundup,” earned $99 million in 2022, making it Korea’s highest grossing movie that year, while last...

Lotte Cultureworks will launch “Holy Night: Demon Hunters,” likely to be one of the biggest Korean movies of the year, at next month’s European Film Market in Berlin.

The occult-themed action movie stars Don Lee, the Korean-American superstar who also fronts “The Roundup” comedy-action franchise. The fourth instalment in that series “The Roundup: Punishment” will have its world premiere in the Berlin festival’s Berlinale Special section, with Lee expected to be in attendance, giving Lotte some additional momentum with the new title launch.

“Holy Night: Demon Hunters” sees Seoul descend into chaos as a devil-worshipping criminal network takes control. In a desperate plea for salvation, the police are forced to enlist Holy Night, a trio of demon hunters armed with supernatural powers.

The cast also includes Seohyun (real name Seo Ju-hyun) of K-pop sensation Girls Generation, who has acting credits in Netflix film “Love and Leashes” and TV series “Private Lives,...

South Korea’s K-Movie Entertainment has closed a slew of deals on basketball comeback drama Rebound led by Signal Pictures for the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

The film also sold to Taiwan (Movie Cloud), Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand (Clover Films), Philippines (888 Films International), in-flight (Encore), Cis (Kinologistika), Mongolia (The Filmbridge) and Hong Kong (Disney Hong Kong).

Written by Kwon Sung-hui (The Spy Gone North) and Kim Eun-hee (Netflix’s Kingdom), the film is based on a true story of the miraculous comeback by Busan’s Jung-Ang High School basketball team.

Directed by Chang Hang-jun (Forgotten), it...

Other titles include The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil also starring Don Lee and Body Snatch.

South Korea’s K-Movie Entertainment has picked up worldwide sales rights for a trio of projects including the latest from director Chang, whose thriller The Target played Cannes’ Midnight Screenings in May and who is in pre-production on the Korean remake of French thriller Body To Body.

Based on an award-winning 2003 film, Body To Body follows a stripper who discovers she has agreed to change her life for a man who turns out to be a twisted transplant doctor with whom she has a son.

Director Steve Sekely’s hardboiled film noir leans heavily on the talents of star-producer Paul Henreid and camera ace John Alton — the three of them whip up the best gimmick-driven noir thriller of the late ‘forties. Strained coincidences and unlikely events mean nothing when this much talent is concentrated in one movie. It’s also a terrific show for star Joan Bennett, who expresses all the disappointment, despair and angst of a noir femme who knows she’s in for more misery.

The Scar (Hollow Triumph)

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date April 18, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz, Leslie Brooks, John Qualen, Mabel Paige, Herbert Rudley, George Chandler, Robert Bice, Henry Brandon, Franklyn Farnum, Thomas Browne Henry, Norma Varden, Jack Webb.

Cinematography: John Alton

Film Editor: Fred Allen

Original Music: Sol Kaplan

Written by Daniel Fuchs from a...

Joan Lorring, 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, dead at 88: One of the earliest surviving Academy Award nominees in the acting categories, Lorring was best known for holding her own against Bette Davis in ‘The Corn Is Green’ (photo: Joan Lorring in ‘Three Strangers’) Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee Joan Lorring, who stole the 1945 film version of The Corn Is Green from none other than Warner Bros. reigning queen Bette Davis, died Friday, May 30, 2014, in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow. So far, online obits haven’t mentioned the cause of death. Lorring, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, was 88. Directed by Irving Rapper, who had also handled one of Bette Davis’ biggest hits, the 1942 sudsy soap opera Now, Voyager, Warners’ The Corn Is Green was a decent if uninspired film version of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 hit play about an English schoolteacher,...

Actor best known as the warm and authoritative Colonel Potter in M*A*S*H

The actor Harry Morgan, who has died aged 96, was best known as Colonel Sherman T Potter, commander of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in M*A*S*H, the wonderfully witty and sharp television series set in an army camp during the Korean war. He played Potter, an expert surgeon and a father figure in the camp, from 1978 until 1983.

Those who knew Morgan from films alone might have been surprised by his warm and authoritative performance as Potter. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, as a supporting actor, he played runtish bad guys and worms that seldom turned. He gradually began to reveal a more likable side, as a musician buddy of Glenn Miller (James Stewart) in The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and in the typically bland 50s TV sitcom December Bride (1954-58). Later, he played...