Lee Joo-Ick

Lee Joo-Ick is a Korean film producer whose films are well received in Asia and gets nominated for many awards in both Hong Kong and China. However, its US limited release generally received the negative response. In 2005, he produced a movie 'Seven Swords' which opened well in Venice film festival. Most of Lee Joo-Ick’s movies are inspired from Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa who is regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema.

For instance, Lee Joo-Ick’s movie ‘Seven Wars’ was an homage to Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’. After the success of ‘Seven Swords’, there was a planning for second and third instalments of the film, and the sequels were in the production line in 2007 and 2008. But now it seems the projects have been shelved. In the year 2006, Lee Joo-Ick produced another romantic Korean language film ‘A Millionaire's First Love’ which set box office records history in theatres. This South Korean movie was even an inspiration for a Nepali film ' Mero Euta Saathi Cha’ (2009) and a Telugu film ' Pilla Zamindar Click to look into! >> Read More... ’ (2011).

In the same year (2006), the producer co-produced Hong Kong-Chinese action war drama films 'A Battle of Wits', which was a joint-venture film of four countries such as China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. This film was based on a Japanese novel. In 2010, he produced a tri-lingual movie in Korean, English, and Chinese language titled  'Late Autumn' which is still the highest-grossing Korean film released in China to date.

The film got a screening in Toronto International film festival and in Berlin film festival too. In 2010, he co-produced a New Zealand-South Korean fantasy action film 'The Warrior's Way'. This film was co-produced  by Barrie Osborne, who also produced ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Lee Joo-Ick got associated with Barrie Osborne for this project and this film bombed at the box office.

Although the film released in the US theatres, it could not run more than three weeks in theatres. Due to its high-budget and failure in the box office, the film was declared a flop by trade analysts. In 2013, Lee Joo-Ick co-produced ‘Kingdom of Conquerors’ which was based on the topic how Genghis Khan called for the famous Daoist philosopher Qiu Chuji to meet with him. It was a good film but faced mixed reviews.