After Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk returns to cinema with a film literally titled Killing Oldmen Club

Director Hwang Dong-hyuk is heading back to the cinema with K.O. Club, a near-future class-war thriller whose title spells out in full as Killing Oldmen Club. It is his first film since The Fortress in 2017, a gap that took in the entire global run of the Squid Game franchise across three seasons (2021, 2024, and 2025).

For international audiences who know Hwang primarily through Squid Game, the return to feature filmmaking is notable partly because of what he is choosing to make. The film is set in a near future where youth itself can be purchased, and the central conflict pits a small class of wealthy, entrenched elders, unwilling to relinquish power or position, against a younger generation that has been effectively locked out of opportunity. It is, in broad strokes, the same generational and economic anxiety that ran through Squid Game, reframed as something more explicitly political.

The cast and the creative team

Lee Byung-hun leads the cast, making this his third collaboration with Hwang after The Fortress and his recurring role in the Squid Game series. Joining him are Park Hae-soo, who played Cho Sang-woo in Squid Game Season 1; Oh Jung-se, a versatile character actor well known to Korean audiences; Jo Yeo-jeong, who appeared in Bong Joon-ho's Parasite; and Kim So-jin.

Production will be handled by Kim Ji-yeon, the producer who worked alongside Hwang on all three seasons of Squid Game. The two co-founded First Man Studio together, and K.O. Club is the production company's first theatrical feature. Filming is scheduled to begin in the first half of next year.

Hwang also wrote the screenplay himself, which is worth noting: Squid Game was a property he had carried for over a decade before Netflix greenlit it, and his return to original material suggests he is using the leverage that global hit generated to pursue a project on his own terms. Whether the film finds a streaming home or a theatrical distributor will be one of the more interesting industry questions as production gets underway.