Squid Game Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk Reunites with Lee Byung-hun for Sci-Fi Thriller K.O. Club
Lee Byung-hun will lead the cast of K.O. Club, a new sci-fi thriller from Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, with production targeted for the first half of 2027 (Variety).
The title is shorthand for Killing Oldmen Club, and the premise is pointed: a near-future where wealth can buy biological youth, pitting an aging elite against a younger generation. Hwang will direct from his own screenplay, producing through Firstman Studio alongside producer Kim Ji-yeon (Variety).
The ensemble brings together several faces familiar from Hwang's orbit. Park Hae-soo, Oh Jung-se, Cho Yeo-jeong, and Kim So-jin round out the cast alongside Lee (Variety). Lee played the Front Man across the run of Squid Game, the Netflix phenomenon that aired from 2021 through 2025 (Korea JoongAng Daily). Park Hae-soo and Cho Yeo-jeong also appeared in the series.
For Hwang, K.O. Club marks a return to the theatrical feature format after nearly a decade. His last released film was the 2017 historical drama The Fortress (Variety). In the years since, he became the first Asian director to win a directing Emmy for a foreign-language series, honoured for his work on Squid Game (Variety).
What makes the project stand out is the reunion at its centre. Hwang and Lee's dynamic on Squid Game — director and masked antagonist — drew global attention, and K.O. Club gives them a feature-film canvas to work on together. The age-and-power premise also sits squarely in the thematic territory Hwang has made his own: systems that exploit the vulnerable, and the people who profit from them.
Firstman Studio confirmed the casting on 27 August 2026. With filming still roughly a year away, no release date has been set.
