With more than 16 million tickets sold, The King’s Warden has almost single-handedly resurrected a sluggish South Korean film industry. In telling the story of the young king Yi Hong-wi, deposed by his uncle and sent into exile, the film has struck a chord with audiences of all ages.

Producer Lim Eun-jung, whose film company Onda Works developed the movie, tells the South China Morning Post that financing the production was extremely difficult.

“I developed the very first treatment in 2018 while I was a development producer at CJ [ENM],” Lim says at the recent Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, alongside director Jang Hang-jun and actor Yoo Hae-jin, who plays the warden, Eom Heung-do. “The first draft screenplay by Hwang Seong-gu came out in 2019.”

Lim’s project explored the relationship between Yi and Eom in the 15th century. Eom, a village chief, offered to host Yi when the king was deposed by his uncle, Grand Prince Suyang. By doing so, Eom thought he could lift his village out of poverty, not anticipating that he would form a close relationship with the king.

In Lim’s treatment, their friendship survived despite the growing political turmoil that led to Yi’s death. Betrayals and brutal vengeance involving Suyang set the story on a grand scale, adding to the project’s costs. Then Covid-19 hit.

“Financing historical films became noticeably harder,” Lim says. “Releases from a distribution company might drop from six or seven a year to two or three.”