Does Kim Woo Bin Really Smoke in Black Knight, or Is It CGI?
It looks like the creators of the hit show used a strange trick because of the actor.
After the success of The Squid Game, Netflix fully invested in Korean cinema and TV series, producing countless projects each trying to match the results of the now iconic first show.
Although a huge number of those series flopped pretty hard, it looks like the streaming giant finally has the right project on their hands, a show that can be considered a worthy successor to The Squid Game — Black Knight.
The series stars famous Korean actor Kim Woo Bin as 5-8, a delivery driver who tries to make the post-apocalyptic world a little better. The atmosphere of the dying Earth is skillfully reproduced on screen, and the lead actor's wonderful performance makes Black Knight a must-see for any Korean series fan, but there's just one small inconvenience in store for viewers — it looks like the producers decided to use a bit more CGI than necessary.
While watching the show, every fan was wondering about one small thing — was Kim Woo Bin really smoking cigarettes on camera? Because it looked like the smoking was added in post-production! The end result seems rather weird and even a bit cheap, which totally ruined the immersion for some viewers.
However, it turns out that director Ui Seok Cho had a very understandable reason for turning simple smoking scenes into a CGI affair.
'Since it was Kim Woo Bin's choice not to smoke, we couldn't make him do so. After a lot of deliberation, the CGI team helped us, and all the smoking scenes were done with special effects,' the director said.
So there is no mystery behind the smoking effect — the actor himself simply refused to smoke, even for a lead role in a blockbuster Netflix series. The director and producers decided to just go with it, as Kim Woo Bin was integral to the success of the show.
As some people point out, Bin's cancer diagnosis in 2017 could be the reason, as smoking in remission is really one of the worst things a person can do. Fans of the actor are already singing Cho's praises for allowing the actor to not smoke in the series out of concern for his health.
Source: News1.