Top actors LEE Byung-heon, JUNG Woo-sung and SONG Kang-ho have all agreed to star in director KIM Jee-woon's ambitious new project The Good, the Bad and the Weird.  LEE will portray "the good", JUNG "the bad", and SONG "the weird", respectively.

A so-called  "Korean-style Western" set in Manchuria during the early 1900s, the film ranks as one of the highest-profile Korean films scheduled to be shot this year.  The casting of three major actors in a single film also makes it a virtual showcase of Korean star power.

Produced by Barunson and sold internationally by Cineclick Asia, The Good, The Bad and the Weird will cost over $10 million and is tentatively scheduled to start shooting in spring of this year, with a release expected in 2008.

Inspired by the Sergio Leone classic The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, the film also builds off a string of Korean genre films from the 1970s that combined the aesthetics of the Western with outlaw movements aligned against Japanese colonial forces. 

International sales company Cineclick Asia will have the film available for pre-sale at this week's European Film Market at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Darcy Paquet (KOFIC)