The production of Ma Dong Seok’s “Hive” is on the verge of suspension due to financial issues and staff’s withdrawals
“Hive”, a mega-scale SF blockbuster starring actor Ma Dong Seok, is facing the crisis of a production suspension.
According to a report by The Fact on Dec 21st, the production of “Hive”, which draws keen attention with Ma Dong Seok’s appearance, has stopped since October. The production team is reportedly suffering financial problems. It was around the beginning of this month that the crisis intensified. Several employees in the production team of “Hive” resigned due to internal conflict with the production company, raising various suspicions, including rumors of the suspension of “Hive” production.
However, some people are saying that the project would not easily fall through as Ma Dong Seok’s appearance has already been confirmed. Since a huge amount of appearance fee would have been paid to cast the “10 million admissions” actor Ma Dong Seok, Ascendio seems to have no reason to give up on the production of this work.
However, an unexpected fact has been confirmed in The Fact’s report. Accordingly, Ascendio is delaying the payment of Ma Dong Seok’s performance fee due to financial circumstances.
An official from a broadcasting company said to The Fact on December 21st, “The actor signed a contract to receive his appearance fee in three times. He already got a down payment in August. He was supposed to receive the second payment by October, but the production company didn’t keep their promise”, adding “I was so curious about Ascendio’s position on this, so I recently talked to a director and only received an ambiguous answer that there were financial problems.”
Ascendio drew public attention by distributing an official press release titled “Ma Dong Seok’s ‘Hive’ appearance confirmed” in August. The news of Ma Dong Seok’s appearance in “Hive” also served as a positive factor for Ascendio, a KOSPI-listed company.
On Aug 12th, shortly after Ma Dong Seok’s confirmation of his appearance in “Hive”, Ascendio’s stock price closed at 1,230 won, up 4.67% from the previous day. It continued to rise by 3.25% on the next trading day (Tuesday, Aug 16th), attracting attention from investors.
Regarding the question “If so, is Ma Dong Seok’s appearance possible in this situation?”, the official explained, “It’s difficult to predict so far. However, in order for actor Ma to digest schedules of other works such as ‘The Roundup 4’ and overseas filming schedules, the filming of ‘Hive’ shouldn’t be delayed any longer.”
Accordingly, attention is being paid to whether “Hive” can overcome the production crisis and start filming. The production cost set by Ascendio for “Hive” is about 20 billion won. Ascendio has discussed closely with leading OTT platforms over the past year to finance production cost, but the industry evaluates that time has passed without any significant results.
An Ascendio official told The Fact on Dec 20th, “It’s true that the progress has stopped due to the departure of some employees of Hive’s production team, but we’re discussing internally as we believe the situation can be resolved smoothly.”
Source: Nate
