Hollywood has had a flood of music biopics. Korea is just getting started.

If any Korean singer deserved to be the subject of the country’s first true music biopic of the 21st century, it would be Shin Hae-chul.

At least, that is what studio Jerrygood Company is supposedly banking on with a feature film on the late, legendary rock singer, with actor Park Jeong-min set to take on the role of Shin.

Local media outlet Ilgan Sports first reported earlier this month that Park had been cast in the biopic, directed by Jang Joon-hwan and tentatively titled "To You" after Shin's 1988 debut song, that will “trace the late singer’s life and music across his 25-year career, from his debut at age 21.”

A spokesperson for Park’s agency, Sem Company, said the actor was "reviewing the script."

Should the project move forward as described, it would be the first domestic music biopic released since 2000 to center on a single modern-day singer under his real name and follow the full arc of his career.

Korea’s earliest known music biopic was “Yun Sim-deok” (1969), about the country’s first professional soprano. Since there, while there have been plenty of documentaries about musicians, scripted movies including "Go Go 70s" (2008) and "C'est Si Bon" (2015) have instead featured fictional characters or focused on a particular venue, era or episode.

Music biopics are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, and a darling in the box office. “Michael” recently became the first biopic to surpass $1 billion worldwide after opening to a genre-record $97.2 million in North America. In Korea, the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2018) drew nearly 10 million moviegoers, coming close to the symbolic milestone commonly used to count the country’s biggest theatrical hits.

Then what has kept Korea, widely regarded as a global cinema powerhouse, from embracing such a popular genre?

"Well, to make a biopic about someone, they first have to be dead," said cultural critic Kim Heon-sik.

Many of the singers with the name recognition and fan base needed to carry a major commercial film are still alive. That includes artists such as Cho Yong-pil, who began his career in the late 1960s and was still releasing new music as recently as 2024.

A film that covers only the triumphs risks becoming little more than an extended tribute, Kim said, and the ones that do handle private failures, conflicts and controversy may be difficult to make with the subject still alive.

The critic points to films about figures such as Ray Charles and Michael Jackson, whose private lives and controversies form an essential part of their stories. Korean musicians are no different, he said: “Where there is light, there is also shade.”

But portraying that shade becomes far more difficult when the subject is still alive — particularly in Korea, which film critic Youn Sung-eun described as more socially conservative than the United States.

And "even when such projects are possible, filmmakers face the burden of securing permission and resolving copyright issues,” Youn said.

Previous attempts show how those concerns shaped the films themselves. “C’est Si Bon,” inspired by folk musicians associated with the famed Seoul music venue of the same name, used fictional names, and centered the story primarily as growing of age and romance. Youn said resistance from some of the real-life figures was among the reasons the film stopped short of becoming a straightforward biopic.

There has also been little commercial incentive to take on those complications.

Both “C’est Si Bon” and “Go Go 70s,” a film built around The Devils, a soul band active in the 1970s, failed to break even at the box office. Music documentaries about well-known Korean singers — including a 2017 film about the late Kim Kwang-seok — are more common, as are concert films for active K-pop acts with global fan bases. Both formats rely on archival material or staged performances, offering cheaper, more controlled access without dramatizing artists’ private lives.

Neither format, however, has produced audiences large enough to convince studios that a big-budget biopic is a safe investment.

“Without a proven success story, the genre has never had the chance to build momentum,” Youn said.

The pool of bankable subjects, and their relatability to contemporary audiences, has also been limited by the relatively recent rise of modern music culture in Korea, according to experts. The kind of organized, highly committed fan bases only began taking shape in earnest only in the 2000s, Kim Heon-sik said.

“There simply have not been many singers […] with a fandom large enough to guarantee that audiences would pay to see a film about them,” he said.

Music critic and columnist Kim Jak-ga, meanwhile, pointed to Korea’s relatively recent embrace of large-scale concert culture as another obstacle.

“The question [for the director] is how to convey the thrill of that scale [of a major performance] — and make the audience within the film and the audience outside it experience it together,” he said.

That is where "the Demon King" Shin stands apart.

Shin exploded onto Korea’s music scene in 1988 when his band Muhangwedo won the grand prize at MBC's "Campus Song Festival" (1977-) with "To You." 

He moved between several bands, including N.EX.T., and an “almost idol-level” solo career, all while pushing Korean rock beyond its established limits: introducing then-uncommon MIDI production, combining rock with house and electronic music and pursuing albums of a scale and complexity that Kim Jak-ga compared to the arrival of Korea’s first CGI-driven blockbuster.

Shin was also credited with helping establish the so-called concept album in Korean pop music, building records around unified narratives and themes. N.EX.T.’s 1997 album, “Lazenca: A Space Rock Opera,” for instance, was conceived as a soundtrack for an animated series. 

His influence extended beyond his own music. Kim described Shin as a “bridgehead” for Korean rock who brought musicians neglected by the mainstream onto his stages, introduced indie music on primetime radio and nurtured younger artists.

“He was the foremost frontier figure — someone who, with extraordinary drive, strategy and conviction, broke through [musical] limitations and raised Korean rock to a new level," said Kim.

Shin was also an outspoken progressive on social and political issues. As a radio DJ on late night programs, he spoke candidly about politics, sex and subcultures, earning a reputation for provocative commentary — and the nickname mawang, or “the Demon King.” He appeared on televised debates to argue for causes including the abolition of the adultery law, the decriminalization of marijuana and a ban on corporal punishment in schools.

“I believe he was the first singer to challenge the taboo that musicians should not speak out on social issues,” Kim Heon-sik said.

Kim Jak-ga, who interviewed Shin several times in his lifetime, remembered him as a magnetic and exceptionally articulate speaker with equal parts humor and charisma.

“His words came out ready for print,” he said. “You could transcribe him almost verbatim and have a finished interview.”

Shin's abrupt death at 46, too, offers a tragic endpoint that artist biopics have often used. The singer died in 2014 following complications from abdominal surgery, in a case later ruled to have involved medical negligence.

“His unexpected death at a relatively young age made him an even more legendary figure,” Youn said. “More than a decade later, the fact that people still miss him and continue to revisit his music has repeatedly proved the strength of his legacy."

Whether "To You" will be a commercial, or even critical, success is anyone's guess. While Hollywood biopics have been reliable moneymakers, and even bagged Oscars for acting, critics have often been less enthusiastic.

Writing in The Guardian, Rebecca Shaw dismissed the genre, at its worst, as “expensive karaoke”: familiar songs, familiar performances and familiar life stories repackaged with little new to say. She also argued that the genre has become oversaturated, with four separate Beatles biopics in production as of May.

“Audiences may focus on the pleasure of hearing the music or watching an actor recreate the performance, but critics look beyond that to the film’s dramatic and narrative completeness," Youn said. “The [upcoming] film has to explore the essence of who Shin was."

Kim Heon-sik says "To you" should look beyond the circumstances of the singer’s own era. Shin pursued music and social activism as a university student despite pressure from his family to choose a more conventional path, such as becoming a doctor — a conflict Kim said could resonate with the concerns of young people now.

“It should naturally show what relevance his story has today," Kim said. “If Shin were alive today, I think he would still be speaking to us."

"To You" was reportedly set to wrap up major casting and enter preproduction as of early July.

BY KIM JU-YEON [[email protected]]