Interview With ‘Colony’ Director Yeon Sang-Ho And Actress Jun Ji-Hyun

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for ‘Colony’!

Yeon Sang-ho on what inspired him to make ‘Colony’

Regina Kim: Director Yeon, what inspired you to make this film?

Yeon Sang-ho: Choi Gyu-seok, who co-wrote the screenplay with me, also worked with me on the Hellbound webtoon, and we wrote the Netflix series Hellbound together as well. After we finished working on Hellbound Season 2—which, in a way, also deals with the issue of herd mentality—we discussed whether there was more we wanted to say about that.

We started talking about why herd mentality can be dangerous. When everything becomes centered around a universal way of thinking, there are moments when minority opinions can become powerless. We felt that that was one of the dangers inherent in having a herd mentality. So that was the starting point for this movie.

How Jun Ji-hyun was cast in ‘Colony’

Kim: How was Jun Ji-hyun cast in this film?

Yeon: Well, first of all, Kwon Se-jeong needed to be the complete opposite of the zombies, who share a collective intelligence. So I imagined Kwon Se-jeong as someone who was a loner or an outcast. But I didn’t want her to be the kind of character who becomes timid or withdrawn because of that. I wanted her to have a very self-confident image. I wanted her to be confident enough that being alone felt like a choice she was making for herself.

Jun Ji-hyun has created so many unique female characters over the course of her long career, and she’s portrayed those kinds of characters so well. I felt she was absolutely perfect for Kwon Se-jeong—to the point where I couldn’t imagine another actress playing the role—so I offered the role to her.

Kim: And Ji-hyun, why did you choose this role?

Jun Ji-hyun: It was a film by Director Yeon Sang-ho, and that was one of the biggest reasons I chose the project. I hadn’t done a movie for quite a long time, and to be honest, I didn’t feel like I’d had many chances to come across really good scripts during that time.

But as soon as I received the director’s script, my first thought was, “Isn’t this exactly the kind of movie I would want to go see at a theater?”

And that’s how I got involved in the project.

‘Colony’ is Jun Ji-hyun’s first movie in over a decade

Kim: This is your first film in 11 years. What did it feel like to return to the big screen after such a long time?

Jun: Well, it’s not that I was intentionally avoiding making films for such a long time. After the pandemic, the film industry slowed down quite a bit, and like I mentioned just now, I don’t think I came across that many good movie scripts. So I naturally ended up focusing more on television series during that time.

But unlike in the past, there really isn’t that much difference between shooting a series and shooting a film these days. So I wasn’t really aware that I hadn’t made a movie in such a long time. It wasn’t until I finally started shooting a film again that I realized, in retrospect, “Wow, it really has been a long time. Time flew so quickly.”

In any case, I’m incredibly happy that the film I chose for my return has been receiving such a good response, and that I was able to work with Director Yeon Sang-ho.

Kim: I heard it’s been doing incredibly well in Korea and that it even set records. Congratulations!

Yeon: Thank you. [Laughs.]

Yeon Sang-ho on whether there’ll be a sequel for ‘Colony’

Kim: Will there be a Part 2 for Colony?

Yeon: We haven’t really been thinking about a Part 2 yet. When we first started working on the project, one of the production companies was Smilegate, which is a large video game company that created the game Crossfire. We had been talking about possibly making a game that would function almost like a sequel to Colony. So I think there’s a possibility that the sequel could take the form of a game.

Kim: So not another movie, but a video game?

Yeon: Yes.

ForbesPark Eun-Bin Talks ‘Spooky In Love,’ KCON And How She Chooses Her RolesBy Regina Kim

The message audiences should take away from ‘Colony’

Kim: I see. That sounds like it could be really fun. What kind of message did you want to convey through Colony?

Yeon: I’ve always thought that zombie films reflect the underlying fears of the society of their time. Starting with George Romero and Night of the Living Dead, I think zombie films have served as a vessel for expressing society’s latent fears. So with this film, I thought about what the underlying fears of the society we’re currently living in might be.

Today, because information is exchanged at such incredible speeds, we’ve developed this kind of collective mentality, or collective intelligence. And now we have AI, which takes that to an extreme. We’re seeing moments when human individuality or minority opinions become extremely powerless. I wanted to capture that particular kind of fear in this movie.

Jun Ji-hyun and Yeon Sang-ho on K-zombies and the scary truth behind those wild car stunts in ‘Colony’

Kim: Ji-hyun, you have a lot of action scenes in this film. Did you do all of the action and stunts yourself?

Jun: I did some of them myself, and for the really difficult or dangerous scenes, the stunt performers helped me.

Kim: There are also so many scenes where you’re running. While I was watching, I kept thinking, “Wow, she’s really good at running.”

Yeon: Ji-hyun is actually really good at action. The funny thing is that Kwon Se-jeong is a university professor, so she’s actually a character who shouldn’t be too good at action. So there were times when we intentionally toned down Ji-hyun’s action skills a little.

Another thing that really impressed me was the car stunt sequence towards the end of the film. I wanted to capture a highly realistic scene. Normally, the actor wouldn’t be inside a moving car—they’d perform against a green screen. But Ji-hyun actually rode inside the car.

Kim: So you didn’t use a green screen?

Yeon: We didn’t use one. We had a special car made with two steering wheels, so a stunt driver sitting in the front passenger seat could control the car while she sat in the driver’s seat and acted out the scene. Towards the end of the movie, there’s a pretty long car-stunt sequence where the car crashes into the zombies, and Ji-hyun had to act while being physically inside that car.

Personally, I was extremely nervous during those scenes because we had to shoot everything for real. We rehearsed it many, many times before actually filming it.

Kim: It felt incredibly realistic when I was watching it. Ji-hyun, what was the most difficult scene for you to film?

Jun: I just remembered it now when the director mentioned it, but when you’re sitting inside the car, you can really feel the full speed of the car with your whole body. So it wasn’t easy to act completely unfazed while feeling that kind of fear.

There were also scenes where we had to actually hit the zombies with the car, and that was really frightening. The zombies had to run straight at the car without hesitation, and the car had to just plow through them like it was nothing, so those scenes really weren’t easy.

Kim: How did the people playing the zombies do that? I mean, American zombies usually move more slowly. But Korean zombies are so fast—

Jun: K-zombies. [Laughs.]

Yeon: [Laughs.]

Kim: Right—K-zombies!

Yeon: All of the zombies in the car-stunt scenes were played by stunt performers, and I remember wondering whether it was really safe. They actually had to be hit by the car, so I thought, “Is this really okay?”

But our stunt coordinator explained that if the car is decelerating and braking at the moment of impact…

Jun: They should be okay?

Yeon: Well, not exactly okay, but apparently they won’t be seriously injured.

Kim: So they were actually being hit?

Yeon: They really were. I was watching and thinking, “Is this okay? I mean, it’s a real traffic accident.” But they told me that because the car was slowing down as it hit them, it was fine. Still, I found myself wondering whether it was really okay.

For other parts of the movie, we really wanted to emphasize the collective mentality of the zombies. So we recruited a number of avant-garde contemporary dance groups and asked them to help choreograph the zombies’ movements.

Yeon Sang-ho explains his reasoning behind some of the key scenes in ‘Colony’

Kim: There’s a scene where Kim Shin-rock’s character Hyun-hee kills her brother Hyun-seok (played by Ji Chang-wook) by stabbing him with a knife instead of biting him. Was there a particular reason for that? Was it specifically to prevent Ji Chang-wook’s character from turning into a zombie?

Yeon: I think that comes from Suh Young-chul’s somewhat twisted mentality. At that point, Young-chul is controlling Kim Shin-rock’s character. Becoming zombies would mean becoming one, in a sense. So I saw that as his way of denying those two siblings the chance to become one again at death. He’s a bad guy.

Kim: I was also really excited when I heard that Go Soo was going to be in the movie, but then he died so early! Why?

Yeon: He plays Kwon Se-jeong’s ex-husband, and we thought a lot about who to cast in that role. To put it simply, we had to ask ourselves, “Who could audiences plausibly accept as both Jun Ji-hyun’s ex-husband and Shin Hyun-been’s current husband?”

We decided that it had to be at least someone of Go Soo’s caliber for audiences to buy it, so we approached Go Soo about doing a special appearance, and we were really grateful that he willingly agreed to do it.

Also, because Go Soo’s character does so much in the beginning of the film, a lot of viewers didn’t expect him to die. We hoped that his death would create a sense of surprise and unpredictability.

Kim: At the end of the movie, the two survivors we see are both women. There really aren’t any men left. Was there a particular reason you chose to end it that way?

Yeon: There wasn’t really a gender-related reason for leaving only those two female characters alive. For me, it was more about the fact that Kwon Se-jeong and Gong Sul-hee (played by Shin Hyun-been) are two people whose circumstances make it difficult for them to stand together, and yet, despite that, they ultimately choose to stand together.

I wanted to show the difference between the kind of collective mentality Suh Young-chul talks about and the solidarity Kwon Se-jeong and Gong Sul-hee show at the end.

ForbesHow ‘Agent Kim Reactivated’ Became One Of 2026’s Most Popular K-DramasBy Regina Kim

Jun Ji-hyun reveals her most memorable scene from ‘Colony’

Kim: Ji-hyun, was there a particular scene or moment from filming that stands out most in your memory?

Jun: Probably the final ant-mill sequence, which is really one of the highlights of our movie. Even when I was reading the script, it was one of the scenes I was most curious about and excited to see brought to life.

When we actually filmed it on set, I felt so many different things. It was visually very striking, and I also thought it would give audiences a lot to think about when they watched the movie.

So filming the ant-mill sequence is probably what I remember the most.

‘Colony’ director Yeon Sang-ho on how he manages to stay so prolific

Kim: Director Yeon, you make so many projects. I really don’t know where all that energy comes from. It feels like you have at least one new project every year.

Yeon: These days I think it’s at least two. [Laughs.]

Kim: That’s true, at least one or two! Where does all that energy come from?

Yeon: I have two kids. [Everyone laughs.]

This interview was conducted in Korean and has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Colony is currently playing in theaters across North America.

ForbesDisney+’s K-Drama ‘The Remarried Empress’ Sets Premiere Date, Drops TrailerBy Regina Kim