Great news for fans of zombie movies and K-horror: Train to Busan is getting a sequel. Speaking to ScreenDaily, director Yeon Sang-ho revealed that he’s currently hard at work on a follow-up set in the world of his critically acclaimed 2016 feature.
“It takes place four years after Train To Busan, in the same universe, but it doesn’t continue the story and has different characters,” he said in the interview. “Government authority has been decimated after the zombie outbreak in Korea, and there is nothing left except the geographical traits of the location – which is why the film is called Peninsula.”
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According to the publication, the film follows an ex-soldier (Gang Dong-won) who escapes from the titular peninsula, now described as a “zombie-infested wasteland” cut off by other countries trying to stop the virus: “Sent back with a crew on a mission to retrieve something, he goes in through the port of Incheon to reach Seoul and comes under attack, discovering there are more non-infected survivors left on the peninsula.”
“The idea of being able to build a post-apocalyptic world – which would be sort of savage but also in a way like ancient times, or like ruined modern times, with rules of its own – was interesting to me,” Yeon said in the interview. “There could be many stories that could keep coming out of that world. Destroyed, isolated, extreme, but with hope of escape and humanism, and the way world powers would look at this place. There could be a lot of material with a lot of greater significance.”
Accordingly, fans should expect something a little bigger than the first film. “The scale of Peninsula can’t compare to Train To Busan, it makes it look like an independent film,” the director added. “Train To Busan was a high-concept film shot in narrow spaces whereas Peninsula has a much wider scope of movement.”
Yeon said his list of references for the film include George Romero’s Land Of The Dead, The Road, Mad Max 2, Mad Max: Fury Road, and mangas like Akira and Dragon Head. Check out the full interview over at ScreenDaily.
Peninsula is currently set for a summer 2020 premiere in South Korea.
