Director Hong Won-Ki, best known for Zombie Hunter (2010), Urban Myths (2022) and Goedam (2020), has been roped to direct a new K-pop thriller Unnie for the new label Badlands.

The film is set to be based on the 2023 Black List script from Lynn Q Yu and will be in the line of Black Swan. Expected to be a thriller, Unnie is set against the competitive world of K-pop. The makers are yet to finalise the cast members for the upcoming film whose production will begin in Seoul and Los Angeles in January.

The production team includes Badlands’ Scott Strauss, Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, Renegade Capital’s Andrew Schwartzberg and Jon Shiffman, and Desert Bloom’s Jennice Lee. Popular K-pop artists Sunshine and Moonshine are composing original soundtrack for Unnie.

Hong is known for his movies and horror anthologies based on popular Korean urban legends where current and former K-pop idols feature. He and videographer Kim Jun-hong are behind Zanybros, the #1 music video production company in South Korea.

Badlands is a partnership between Iwanyk and Lee’s Thunder Road and former longtime Screen Gems executive Strauss.