“Squid Game” Breakout Star Hoyeon Joins Theo James on ‘The Hole’ from ‘I Saw the Devil’ Director

Theo James (The Monkey) is set to star in The Hole, a new thriller based on Hye-young Pyun‘s 2017 Shirley Jackson award-winning novel of the same name. Variety reports that the actor will be joined by “Squid Game” breakout star Hoyeon.

Also attached is I Saw the Devil director Kim Jee-woon.

James stars as “Owen, a successful professor living abroad in South Korea, who is bedridden after a devastating car accident that killed his wife, Sandy. He is left under the care of Yuna, his Korean mother-in-law, but when she starts to unravel the devastating truth behind Owen and Sandy’s marriage, and Owen himself, his road to recovery is threatened.”

Hoyeon will play Owen’s wife Sandy. Hoyeon, also known as Jung Ho-yeon, is a South Korean model and an actress who made her acting debut on Netflix’s popular “Squid Game” series as the breakout character Kang Sae-byeok. Her portrayal earned the actor a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series.

The story takes place in the U.S. and Korea and will feature a combination of English and Korean language. Principal photography is expected to begin in the first half of 2025.

Hye-young Pyun’s novel captures the horrors of isolation, neglect, and loneliness, so expect a more psychological thriller. Of course, Kim Jee-woon has a way with escalating tension, so this is already an anticipated title.

The book’s official synopsis: “In this tense, gripping novel by a rising star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house. But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.”

Sam Esmail, Chad Hamilton, and Nick Krishnamurthy are producing for Esmail Corp alongside Kimberly Steward and Alex Foster for K Period Media and Andy Sorgie via Paisan, his KPM backed banner. Jay Choi and Jee-woon are producing with Soon Ho Song who will serve a co-producer for Anthology Studios.