Lee Min-Ho to star in re-imagining of action comedy, now set in Seoul in 2011

Actor Lee Min-Ho has been casted as the star of the live-action Korean television adaptation of Tsukasa Hojo's City Hunter detective action comedy manga. In the original manga, Ryo Saeba is a private eye ("sweeper") with unrivaled marksmanship and an over-the-top obsession for the opposite sex.

The new version from the television broadcaster SBS re-imagines manga's setting of Tokyo in the late 1980s as Seoul in 2011. Lee will play a former CIA operative who now works as a gun-for-hire.

In 2008, the American company Fox Television Studios signed a tentative agreement to co-produce and distribute a joint Korean-Japanese live-action adaptation of the manga, although no further developments in that effort has since been announced. Another Korean actor, Jung Woo-sung, had been previously attached to that earlier, proposed live-action version. Another Asian star, Hong Kong martial artist Jackie Chan, played Saeba in a loose 1992 live-action Hong Kong adaptation of City Hunter. Coincidentally, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment distributes this 1992 City Hunter film in North America.

The original manga had already been adapted into four television anime series, one anime movie, and several video and television specials. ADV Films released most of these anime projects in North America. Hojo has since drawn an Angel Heart spinoff to his City Hunter manga, and that manga has also been adapted into anime for television.

Credits:ANN