A poster of the movie Thirst (Korean title, Bat) directed by the famous director Park Chan-wook (Old boy, Lady vengeance) was recently released.

As you can see, the male actor is Song gang-ho. The actress is Kim ok-bin. The film to be shown on April 30 is a story of a catholic priest who becomes a vampire after blood transfusion. He gets involved in a fatal love affair with a friend’s wife (Kim ok-bin) who asks him to kill her husband.

The movie is drawing hot attention in Korea and from other countries as well. Even before the premiere, many countries such as France, UK, Russia, Greece, Singapore, Taiwan, and Romania (Yes. the homeland of vampire legend) already bought the film.

The strong interest may be attributed to Mr. Park Chan-wook’s artistic achievement thus far but also to the commercial potential of the film, because the movie is the first Korean film in which a major Hollywood studio  -  Universal Pictures International – invested.

Apart from the movie itself, there was an interesting happening about the poster. Original poster of the movie (below) was somewhat different from the above image.

Currently, the original poster cannot be used for the promotion in Korea. Why not?  It’s because Korea Media Rating Board, government agency that rates public release of films and performances decided that the poster is harmful.

I have no clear idea why and in what sense the poster is harmful. Maybe the female legs streched behind the back of Song gang-ho made the board members unhappy. Maybe they thought the position has some sexual connotation. Maybe they don’t like a woman hanging upside down with legs wide open.  Lots of maybe…

Maybe it would be wiser just to watch the trailer of the movie rather than wasting our time with so many maybes :-)

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