Bong Joon-ho to Set Sail as Producer with SEA FOG, Song Joong-ki in Talks to Star

We're eagerly anticipating Bong Joon-ho's post-apocalyptic sci-fi opus Snowpiercer but while we wait for him to put the finishing touches on his summer blockbuster, it seems the ace Korean director has set his sights on a new project. Bong's career as a producer looks to set sail with Sea Fog, a stowaway drama based on a 2007 play that is in turn drawn from real events circa 2001. Enormously popular Korean Idol Song Joong-ki (A Werewolf Boy) is said to be highly considering the lead role.

After a fruitless trip out to sea, a fishing vessel takes on some ethnic Korean passengers in China but their journey back to the peninsula is fraught with tempestuous weather. What's more the police is on their tail and the stowaways are slowly suffocating to death.

The project will be helmed by debut filmmaker Sim Sung-bo, who previously worked with Bong as a writer on Memories of Murder (2003), a project that was also originated from a play based on real events. Song Joong-ki, whose boyish face is omnipresent in Korea, is in talks for the lead role though is also considering other projects. While not the most exciting casting news, let's not forget that Bong previously used another Korean Wave Idol at the peak of his popularity when he cast Won Bin for 2009's Mother.

Bong's recently acquired experience in cramped spaces should also be put to good use in what is shaping up to be one of the most exciting Korean projects on the horizon. Korean distributor N.E.W., currently on a hot streak with gangster saga New World, Kim Ki-duk's Golden Lion-winning Pieta and the hit family drama Miracle in Cell No.7, will back the film.

Given that Kim Han-min (director of War of the Arrows) is also prepping the period naval warfare film Battle of Myeongryang with Choi Min-sik and Ryoo Seung-ryong, Korean cinema looks to be taking to the sea in 2014.