Dr. Brain director Kim Jee-woon has revealed that he had first planned to adapt its story as a film.
The prolific director, writer and producer of Apple TV+‘s first-ever South Korean original series Dr. Brain recently sat down for an interview with Yonhap News Agency to speak about the creative process behind the show.
“When I first got an offer for the project, I wanted to make a film,” the acclaimed director revealed. Dr. Brain is notably a television adaption of a popular South Korean webtoon of the same name. “But to tell a deeper and richer story of the creative idea, I decided to produce a TV series.”
Moving away from the original source material, Kim said he wanted to use its the small screen adaptation to expand on the story of neuroscientist Sewon (played by Parasite star Lee Sun-kyun) by delving deeper into his emotional journey and growth as a husband and father.
“To adapt this web comic into a six-hour TV series, I added more layers of Sewon’s relationship and his efforts to fill the emotional deficiency,” Kim explained. “This process of building a longer narrative is quite different from making a film.”
Creating a six-hour-long series was no easy task for Kim, who had to adjust to a tight filming schedule. “In the past I had to make a two-hour film within a given time span,” he explained. “Now, I have the same time frame, but I have to make a six-hour series. What pressure.”
Dr. Brain‘s first episode, which premiered on November 4, is now available to stream worldwide on Apple TV+. Its remaining five episodes will be released weekly, with its last episode wrapping the series up on December 9.
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