How a Korean Director Overcame the North American Barrier Even Hayao Miyazaki Faced

The Highest-Grossing Korean Film in North America: 'King of Kings'
Director Sungho Jang: "Challenging Without Original Source Is Difficult"
Reducing Failure Risk by Emphasizing Familiar Christianity and Avoiding Brokers

The animation 'King of Kings' is the highest-grossing Korean film ever released in U.S. theaters. Since its release on April 11, it has accumulated $60,248,059 (approximately 82.8 billion KRW) in revenue. This figure easily surpasses the $53,847,897 (about 74 billion KRW) earned by 'Parasite.' It also overcame the limitations that Asian animations such as Hayao Miyazaki's 'Howl's Moving Castle' ($9,173,958) and 'Spirited Away' ($15,205,725) had previously faced.

Animation 'King of Kings' Still Cut

The difference can be traced back to the planning stage. Director Sungho Jang originally produced this film with the North American market in mind. He believed that having a well-known original work was essential for success. This belief was formed after witnessing the box office failure of 'The Rescuers Down Under' ($27,931,461), a film he personally enjoyed.

Director Jang participated as a speaker at the '2025 Content Industry Forum' held by the Korea Creative Content Agency at the CKL Stage in Seoul on June 18, stating, "If you look closely, there are almost no cases where Walt Disney succeeded with original content. Most of the works we know are based on pre-existing stories."

In fact, Walt Disney's foundational work 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' was based on the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale 'Snow White.' 'The Little Mermaid' is adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's story of the same name, 'Beauty and the Beast' from the novel by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, and 'The Lion King' is inspired by William Shakespeare's tragedy 'Hamlet.' Even 'Frozen,' which attracted 10,296,101 viewers in Korea, was motivated by Andersen's fairy tale 'The Snow Queen.'

Director Sungho Jang, who directed and produced 'King of Kings'

Director Jang turned his attention to the public domain (works free of copyright restrictions). He excluded works that had already been made into feature-length animations and carefully selected thirty titles that seemed to have a low probability of failure. Among them, the work that stood out the most was Charles Dickens' 'The Life of Our Lord.' He explained, "The United States is a country founded by Puritans. If we emphasize a Christian message, we can resonate with a deeply religious audience. By utilizing churches and faith-based organizations to hold advance screenings and promotional campaigns, I believed word-of-mouth could be maximized."

As Director Jang pointed out, Christian films have a low probability of failure. In North American theaters, 'The Passion of the Christ' earned $83,848,082 (about 115.1 billion KRW), 'Son of God' earned $59,700,064 (about 8.2 billion KRW), 'Heaven Is for Real' earned $91,443,253 (about 125.5 billion KRW), 'Exodus: Gods and Kings' earned $65,014,513 (about 89.2 billion KRW), 'War Room' earned $67,791,017 (about 93.1 billion KRW), and 'Sound of Freedom' earned $184,178,046 (about 252.8 billion KRW), respectively.

Animation 'King of Kings' Still Cut

These films also performed strongly in the ancillary rights market. Typical commercial films generate about 2.6 times their box office revenue, but Christian films earn at least five times as much. The period over which they generate revenue is also relatively long. Director Jang stated, "In the case of 'The Prince of Egypt,' released in 1998, it continues to generate revenue even 27 years later."

No matter how strong the planning is, failing to understand local circumstances can easily lead to failure. Drawing on his network built as the CEO of Mofac Studio, Director Jang personally recruited senior Hollywood figures. The first person he brought on board was Jamie Thomason, who spent 16 years at Disney and was responsible for casting over ninety feature-length animations.

Director Sungho Jang, who directed and produced 'King of Kings'

Director Jang commented, "He is such an influential expert that he even established the casting department in Disney's animation division. Thanks to his efforts, we were able to recruit a star-studded cast including Oscar Isaac, Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Mark Hamill, and Pierce Brosnan." He added, "If we had gone through multiple layers of brokers, we might have failed. If you want results, you must jump directly into the mainstream."