[Yeterview] "Zombie Bus 2" PD "Roh Hong-chul Resurrection, Andre Zombie...None of them were scheduled.

Half Zombie Half Human Noh Hong-chul's Resurrection, and Chef Andre's zombieization of overwhelming physicality... All were not on the schedule.

I met with producer Park Jin-kyung and producer Moon Sang-don of the Netflix original "Zombie Bus: New Blood" (hereinafter referred to as "Zombie Bus 2"), which was released on the 19th.

'Zombie Bus 2' is a zombie comedy variety in which 14 survivors perform various quests in this land where zombies have risen. It depicts the emergence of "New Blood," the only hope in the threat of powerful zombies, and the process of solving unusual quests and dilemmas for survival. Season 2 will grow its scale and travel around the country from Jeju to Seoul.

Last year, "Zombie Bus" made the top 10 list of 13 countries, including Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, in the Netflix Global Top 10 Series (non-English) category, giving a glimpse of the possibility of K-zombie entertainment. Season 2 also ranked on Netflix's Top 10 in South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, raising the possibility of producing season 3.

Q. The scale is bigger than last season.
Park Jin-kyung PD (hereinafter referred to as Park): It has not grown much. I think it's within 10% in terms of production cost. Since know-how was created, it was reduced to reduce it, and the part that responded well was saved. In season 1, viewers liked to change the location in a way such as marts, abandoned factories, and amusement parks, so they tried to draw what was happening in various places again this time. So I spent more budget on recruiting places. In season 1, I also devoted myself to CG as VFX, but the zombie was expressed more real than I thought on the screen, so I reduced it a little this time.

Q. I also paid more attention to storytelling this season.
Park: The basic attitude of the follow-up is to develop what was fun in any program and to make up for what was lacking. Season 1 was like, "Zombies appeared, let's run away." In the meantime, the response was good that the story was included a little. In season 2, I tried to make a story using the zombie cliché.

Producer Moon Sang-don (hereinafter referred to as Moon): There was not much story in season 1. It was a repetition of accidental occurrence, pursuit, and escape. This time, he described it as "Yerama (entertainment drama)" with the idea of having a minimum causal relationship, but tried to add drama. So I tried to make you wonder about the result and the cause for it.

Q. The story might not go as the production team thought.
Park: It is difficult if the next location itself is changed to Tong because a specific performer acted unexpectedly. It can be modified in small situations, but I tried to make the final result look like a console game. There is a forced cinematic part, and when it is over, variables are created as the player moves, and changes have occurred.

For example, in the fourth episode, there was a quest where Taeyeon hit a person with a wooden block, but it was not set as Taeyeon in the first place. The cast members were encouraged to talk, "What if my family became zombies?" and only Taeyeon said, "If you become a zombie, it's over." I thought the dilemma would not be expressed well if a person who thinks zombies are people grabbed a stick, but Taeyeon said that and it was decided on the spot. There were always variables like that.

Q. There were a lot of new members including Kwon Eunbi and Taeyeon.
Statement: The casting is satisfactory. Existing members are fully predictable characters. However, new characters showed a lot of twists on the scene. I didn't think that Yook Sung-jae would run in to save Kwon Eun-bi and get bitten. From the director's point of view, I thought, 'It's done!' The story continued in a cool way. Unlike the image we know, Cocoon also used his body really well. Taeyeon and others showed unexpected performances, so everyone was 100% satisfied with their expectations.

Park: Variety is fun when members get close, but we don't have time because it's 7 episodes. The focus of the casting this time was the variety experience and mutual friendship. Yook Sung-jae also did "All the Butlers," and the main thing was that he was the same age as Dex. Shin Hyun-joon also had experience with Lee Si-young for almost 10 years. In season 1, there were people who were put in the middle, but it didn't mix well with the people the members met for the first time. That's the lesson I learned there.

Q. Why did you revive Noh Hong-chul by setting him as a rare constitution?
Park: The holder of New Blood should be set, and Noh Hong-chul had left the rice cake for his follow-up in season 1. At the end of season 1, I was bitten by Park Na-rae in the Ferris wheel, and she liked it with a smile before filming. At that time, I thought, 'This person is a little strange, it's okay to have a rare personality.'(laughs) So I went to the amusement park again a week after filming and filmed an additional scene of me wandering as a zombie a year later. It's like filming the ending twice.

Q. What criteria were the quests made by?
Park: I wrapped it as a quest, but I think it's right to say that the entertainment game was wrapped according to the zombie concept. However, it reflected zombie characteristics. When you play "Ice Game", you have to attack non-ice people, but zombies don't have egos, so you can't tell who you're going to attack. So I told zombie actors, 'If you can't see it, don't attack it. If you can see it, you can approach it,' he explained. However, as comedy has different characteristics from country to country, Quest also showed mixed reactions. In season 2, the scene that had a lot of feedback that it was the most fun was the "human curling" part. But international viewers don't understand. There's a temperature difference.

Q. Who's the most memorable cast?
: I want to pick Mr. Dex and Mr. Yook Sung-jae. Sungjae is on the soft side and Dex is a strong personality, but Dex listens to Sungjae well. It was good to see them talking about cartoons, animations, and games during the break. It's called the "relief line," so the three of us, including Kwon Eun-bi, had a very good chemistry. Another thing that comes to mind is Jo Se-ho and Defconn. Entertainers are definitely entertainers. Cho Se-ho was often at the center of the situation where the cast could get closer. Defconn took the lead in the direction of the play even if he didn't ask him to do it.

Q. Producer Park Jin-kyung was No. 1 in 13 countries in the season 1, but she said she wanted to be No. 1 in 130 countries in season 2.
Park: The words I added were 'No season 2 is better than season 1'. Haha. This time, I basically reinforced my comedy a lot. The reason was that one of the most common feedbacks we received in 1 was, "I don't know what genre this is." There is a lot of staged feeling to be a serious survival, so this time I aimed to combine entertainment and drama well. Regardless of the individual difference in fun, the question of 'What kind of broadcast is this?' is less certain. I think they understood what kind of genre this is.

Q.Unlike Season 1, Season 2 also has a high favorability for performers who claim to be villains.
Moon: Noh Hong-chul is a representative.
Park: There are also genre influences. In season 1, when Noh Hong-chul pushed Park Na-rae, he responded, "How can he do that?" Season 2 definitely accepted this genre, so it was good for DinDin, Defconn, and Justin to laugh and enjoy the process of human curling and driving refugees to death.

Q. Is the production team's initial intention close to realistic season 1? Or is it more like season 2 in harmony with variety shows?
Park: Since the Season 1 production presentation, he has stressed several times that it is not a reality show. It can be seen that the direction planned by the production team is closer to season 2. As the story progressed, I think it was inevitable. It was very simple during season one. It was good to observe the real reaction of "What should I do when a zombie appears?" Season 2 is just a repetition if you do the same, so I put in a story, and as a result, I did a quest related to the story in the middle.

Q. Who was disappointed that you were eliminated early?
Park: Patricia was later rescued and filmed, but she kept it for now. However, even if we play season 3, we don't know what the timing will be and the background may change, so we don't know yet whether we will join or not.

: In the case of Kim Sun-tae, it was regrettable that he died early. For the production team, it was a kind of Joker card. I imagined what it would have been like to survive to the end and enter the relief center, and what it would have been like to ride a rocking bridge.

Q. Is it a planned situation that Chef Andre turned into a zombie?
Park: Just as Noh Hong-chul urgently set up a rare constitution for season 2 at the end of season 1, Chef Andre was not scheduled. After being dropped from the helicopter, he returned to the United States. After that, during the meeting, there were a lot of opinions that "If this person comes out as a zombie, it would be really scary," so I called him back from the United States. The snoring scene was also a real situation, not a script. Chef Andre arrived the day before the shooting as he came from the United States in a hurry. The filming also had to use a lot of strength, tied to the tires. The broadcast showed a scene of piercing the wall once, but in reality, it had to be shot several times. So maybe I was tired, I covered my blanket later and I actually fell asleep. The production team sees the edited version hundreds of times and thousands of times, and what's funny every time I see it was the snoring scene. The mixing director and Jo Se-ho's dancing scenes always make me laugh.

: Everyone said on the set, "Andre will be over if he becomes a zombie," but no one knew Andre would become a zombie. The production team didn't even know. The situation happened by accident, so I felt like I was collecting rice cakes to some extent. Chef Andre and actor Kim Byung-ho of "Pamyo" appeared and became visually differentiated, and thanks to this, the crazy character played by Shin Hyun-joon also seems to have revived.

Park: If you've seen the finished work, you can think of it as a story of the first to seventh episodes. Some days the shooting is done for two consecutive days, but basically it's done for as short as two weeks and 10 days, so some variables can arise. If a scene was made fun during the previous shoot, the game changed and the story changed slightly between the scenes. Like Chef Andre, a person who didn't exist is added. There are a lot of things that have changed spontaneously in that way.

Q. Who do you want to be in season 3?
Park: There are a lot of new people coming to season 2, so if I do season 3, I would like to make more use of the existing performers. In particular, Dex and Yook Sung-jae are a combination that I admired even when I saw them. When we were together, the scene where Dex's expression and Yook Sung-jae got bitten and leaned on the tire when we first came into the subway was so cool that we had to watch it. What was interesting was that there wasn't much time for two people in the swimming pool scene. The viability was so strong that he didn't come out of the water to not die. New chemistry and performers are good, but I think it will make use of the existing good feedback.

: (In short) I want to save Yook Sung-jae. Haha.

Q. I said that domestic and international viewers' responses are different, but if we produce season 3, where will we focus on domestic or global?
Park: The target audience is unconditionally domestic viewers. Since the comedy genre has to have a cultural background, there are parts that are not easy for foreign viewers to understand. Cho Se-ho says, "I came with Chang-hee," or "I'm not Cho Hye-ryeon" when dancing is a laughing code that only Korean viewers can know. However, I think seasons 1 and 2 and 3 should definitely target Korean viewers. In fact, the popular content was not aimed at overseas markets on purpose. I don't know where to match the code among the various countries, and I try to match it to Korean viewers unconditionally.

: Even if you target overseas, you don't know how to do it.(laughs) Now it's a cliché, but don't you think the most Korean thing is world-class? Zombies are a world-class location, but our directing methods and know-how are sufficiently Korean. It is natural to target Korea, where the greater the proportion of comedy, the more culturally sympathetic it can be. Since Southeast Asia and South America, which consume a lot of Korean content, see and respond to it, we believe that it will eventually be reacted from overseas only when it is made more fun and our color comes out.

[Photo = Courtesy of Netflix]

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