Disney+ has found its biggest Korean hit yet in mystery thriller Nine Puzzles, now the platform’s most-viewed title ever across the Asia-Pacific region — surp***ing all other series and films. It also ranks as the most-watched Korean title on Disney+ globally and continues to gain traction in Western markets, the company says.
A psychological crime thriller laced with whimsy and grit, Nine Puzzles follows Yoon E-na (Kim Da-mi), a brilliant but socially awkward criminal profiler who was once the traumatized teenage witness of a notorious unsolved murder. A decade later, she joins the Seoul Metropolitan Police’s violent crimes unit — where she’s unexpectedly paired with Kim Han-saem (Son Suk-ku), the very detective who once suspected her of committing the crime. When a new series of killings begins, each accompanied by a cryptic hand-drawn puzzle piece, the two must navigate their fraught personal history to unmask a killer whose motivations seem to trace back to the original case. The show’s title refers to these haunting clues — a sequence of nine puzzle pieces, each foretelling a new murder, and each fitting into a larger picture that gradually reveals the truth behind a decade-old cover-up.
Disney’s creative execs in the region say they had high hopes for the show during development, but also some apprehensions about its elaborate, twist-filled plot.
“In the beginning, we did want to make sure that people would be able to follow it,” says Carol Choi, Disney’s executive VP in the Asia Pacific region. “Because even when I was looking at some of the early cuts, I was like, ‘Are some people going to be confused?’ But I personally loved it, and one thing we have learned is to never doubt the intelligence of your audience.”
As so often happens, the very attributes that felt risky about the project — its complex, patient plotting, elevated tone and unconventional characters — would ultimately prove to be its biggest selling points with fans. “You just never know until it’s embraced by the audience,” Choi says.
The studio was also re***ured that the cinematic gifts of the director they had hired to helm the series, Yoon Jong-bin, would help carry audiences through the labyrinthine story. “Director Yoon was the big draw,” Choi adds. A filmmaker known for gritty realism and taut political storytelling, Yoon made his name with acclaimed features like Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time (2012), Kundo: Age of the Rampant (2014), and The Spy Gone North (2018). He also recently tried his hand at series television, directing Netflix’s crime drama Narco-Saints (2022) — making Nine Puzzles his second attempt at longform storytelling, and arguably his most stylistically adventurous project to date.
One of the show’s boldest creative choices is its protagonist, Yoon E-na (played by Kim), an eccentric rookie profiler who is a far cry from the hard-boiled detectives usually seen in Korean thrillers. Cheerful but emotionally guarded, impulsive and almost cartoonishly quirky, E-na struck some viewers in Korea as odd or even off-putting at first — but as the story progressed, her peculiar charm and hidden vulnerability gradutally won them over in a big way. Disney had anticipated that E-na’s atypical nature might be a jolt to audiences. Choi explains: “From a marketing perspective, we also made a conscious decision to set her character up more than usual upfront, to let people know that she is a different kind of detective. We pushed that further upstream in the marketing.”
To further boost local appeal, Yoon called in industry favors to ***emble a rotating cast of high-profile guest stars, each anchoring an episode with a fresh mystery. From Hwang Jung-min and Park Sung-woong to Ji Jin-hee and Lee Sung-min, the cameos turned the series into something of an event — a game for viewers and a showcase for some of Korea’s biggest names.
Now that Nine Puzzles is a bona fide hit, speculation has turned to the possibility of a second season — although Disney+ and co-producer Kakao Entertainment have yet to confirm any plans. Yoon recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about bringing the series to life, from balancing its noir-meets-cartoon tone to plotting its puzzles-within-puzzles mystery, and how he’s feeling about the prospect of doing it all over again for a potential Season 2.
When the opportunity to direct Nine Puzzles first came to you, what grabbed you about the project, and what were your initial thoughts about how you would want to approach it?
From my first glance at the scripts, I found it all very gripping. It was an easy read and I was instantly immersed in it, dying to find out what would happen next. When it comes to the mystery thriller genre — be it novels, films or drama series — the crucial point, when we get to the very end of it, is the question: Was that convincing? Did that mystery make sense? And when it came to this script, I found it fully convincing. It was a great ride, with lots of complex twists, but it all made sense to me. So, more than anything, that’s what got me interested in doing the project.
Then, when I first started to think about how I would direct it, the first question that popped into my head was, “Okay, it makes sense, but is this a story that could really happen in present-day reality? Are these characters the sort of people we could envision meeting in real life? As I thought about that, I decided that the universe of this project would have to straddle the line between reality and something a little cartoon-like, in a good way. So I tried to elevate the tone to meet that kind of universe when it came to production design and setting up the characters.
It’s an impressive balancing act. There are times when the tone is dark, gritty and noirish, and other times when it’s quirky and whimsical —and somehow it all works. What was involved in pulling that off?
I focused on the concept of a “mystery cartoon” rather than a mystery novel. Mystery novels are generally more grounded in reality, with a heavy or noir tone. If you think of the notion of a mystery cartoon, you feel a lighter and more humorous tone instantly. The latter is was what I was aiming for, even though the story involves some heavy themes and a serial killer.
Yoon E-na, played by Kim Da-mi, is quite an unconventional detective heroine, particularly for a Korean thriller. She’s odd — cheerful but emotionally guarded, childish, impulsive-seeming and quirky.
The E-na character as written in the original script was a lot closer to a cl***ic, professional detective type — blunt, strong and tough. The character was fine as it was, but I wanted the character to be a bit childlike, sort of like she’s stuck in the past, from when this traumatic event took place in her life 10 years ago, and that she has failed to really grow after that. I thought this would be a fresh, novel approach. But it was a risk. Mystery fans are more familiar with the traditional charismatic, professional detective archetype. Going with that kind of character would have been easier, and she might have been better received or more easily accepted by fans from the start. But I really wanted to do something to set the show apart. So Kim Da-mi and I worked hard together to shape the character and intentionally make her acting quite elevated, so it feels like she’s slightly removed from reality. This carried through to her costumes and makeup, so that she would feel like a bit like a cartoon character that’s been dropped into reality. I also made her a bit more like a private eye than an actual police detective.
Director Yoon Jong-bin on the set of ‘Nine Puzzles’
What have you observed about the way your characters were received in Korea? I read that some fans in Korea initially found E-na to be a little unbelievable, or even annoying, but that she really won them over as the show progressed. Son Suk-ku’s quirks as detective Kim Han-saem, meanwhile, seem to have been universally beloved. From the number of memes that have popped up online about his signature beanie, I would imagine hats in that style will be a trend in Seoul once the weather cools, if they’re not already. Maybe even neck tattoos.
(Laughs) All of that is spot-on. I think how you respond to E-na really determines whether or not you’re going to like the show. In fact, that character is so unconventional, or unfamiliar, here, that many people did find it a little odd at first, but like you said, if you get past that point, I think she really grows on you. That seems to have been the overall reaction. For Han-saem, I thought he would need to somehow match the cartoonish tone we were setting with E-na, and that’s why we added things like his signature beanie and his tattoo. In real life, Korean cops don’t wear casual beanies and they definitely don’t have neck tattoos. So these were elevated touches to give him something to match E-na —and like her, at first it hit people as odd and unfamiliar, but then became a big part of his appeal.
As the title suggests, the series keeps you guessing with elaborate puzzles, subplots, red herrings and puzzles within puzzles. How did you approach plotting the mystery so that it would be solvable yet surprising? To what extent was the whole project a puzzle to be solved for you as a creator?
More than anything, I really thought it was essential to convey the impression I got when I first read the script, so I really tried to put myself in the viewer’s shoes at each step. In fact, personally, I’m a very gullible viewer. When I watch films or read novels, if the author intends for the reader to perceive something in a certain way, to mislead them about who the villain may be, then that is exactly how I perceive the story. Every time I’m like, “Oh, this guy must be the culprit. Wait, he’s not the culprit? What now?! (Laughs)” So, from episode to episode, I really tried to frame things so that I personally felt convinced a given character was the killer, and then we would follow the script and shed light on a new suspicious character, and keep the mystery revolving. Being personally very gullible and constantly putting myself in the place of the audience was the key for me in directing this series.
As I first started watching Nine Puzzles, I found myself getting a vague Park Chan-wook vibe — and then I realized that Cho Young-wuk, Park’s longtime collaborator, did the show’s score. You’ve also collaborated with Cho extensively over the years. This score is particularly wonderful and felt it did a lot of the work of tying the show’s various tones together very elegantly. What can you share about the musical collaboration?
I’ve worked with composer Cho ever since Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time and he’s someone I always want to collaborate with. When it came to the music for Nine Puzzles, we focused on a number of key aspects. First, I wanted to have a clear theme song for E-na, which would better convey what’s going through this unconventional character’s mind. I also wanted there to be a theme for each of the key incidents that happen throughout the story. There was also a theme song when E-na is starting to do her profiling, making all the different inferences. Having these key themes helps the viewer absorb the complex story and better understand what the core of each episode is about. Another crucial decision: The music of the title sequence doesn’t appear anywhere in the series until near the very end, when you find out whose theme song it has been all along. The intention was to get the audience used to this music — and then later to reveal whose it actually is.
The show is impressively cinematic throughout. I appreciated the pacing, and the way the series takes its time with character development, which comes through the story’s evolution, rather than kind of being dumped all at the front, the way many less sophisticated procedural shows do. How did making this series compare to the way you approach your feature films?
Since I usually do movies, I guess I took the same approach for this project. I didn’t do anything specifically different. As usual, I began by putting together comprehensive storyboards. Since the series is 11 episodes, this workload alone was about 5x of what a feature film would be. It wasn’t possible for me to do all of the prep work I would have done for a film, but I would say it was about 80 percent to 90 percent of the prep work I would have put into a film if it were the same scale. But yeah, it was pretty exhausting. The storyboards alone took about six months to put together.
Now that the show is a huge hit, would you be up for doing it all over again? Let’s avoid spoilers, but season 1 leaves our heroes in a place where they are ready for another case. Season 2?
Well, Disney+ and Kakao Entertainment would have to answer that one. I haven’t heard of any plans for another season yet. A lot of things have to happen to make that possible. The series writer Lee Eun-mi and our cast have to be onboard. And I’m actually preparing to shoot a new film. I haven’t really disclosed anything about it yet, even in Korea, but I can tell you that it’s something I’ve been working on and wanting to do for 10 years — and we’re finally figuring out the details and hoping to shoot it next Spring.
But if all of the players come together and the timing works for you, would you be up for another season?
Of course, why not? I wouldn’t want to be left out.
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