Dexter Studios Co., Ltd. (CEO: Kim Wook, Kang Jong-ik) solidified its reputation as a comprehensive content company, winning Best Picture at the Blue Dragon Film Awards with its latest film “Escape from Mogadishu.”
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Escape from Mogadishu won the Best Picture Award at the 42nd Blue Dragon Film Awards that got under way at the KBS Hall in Yeouido, Seoul, on November 26. Previously, Escape from Mogadishu had won Best Picture at the 30th Buil Film Awards.
Escape from Mogadishu tells the daring escape of a group of people trapped in Mogadishu during a civil war in Somalia in the 1990s. After its release in July, the movie garnered plenty of support from the audiences with favorable reviews describing it as “the best Korean movie this year,” “fast-paced and clean with no added fluff,” and “film with a solid storyline and plenty of things to see.” In total, Escape from Mogadishu sold 3,612,866 tickets (based on data from the integrated computer network of the Korean Film Council), making it the top performer at the box office among Korean films released this year.
Escape from Mogadishu is the fifth film production that Dexter Studios has participated in. But more importantly, the company had its hands in the overall production process and not just post-production. Starting with “Mr. Go” (2013), Dexter Studios has steadily upgraded its production capacity with “Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds” (2017), “Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days” (2018), and “Ashfall” (2019). Escape from Mogadishu winning multiple honors at domestic film festivals is proof that Dexter Studios is now recognized as a comprehensive content company rather than just a visual special effects (VFX) vendor.
Dexter Studios plans to continue its hard work as a comprehensive contents company going forward. The company is in the midst of planning and developing movies, dramas, and OTT contents together with its subsidiary, Dexter Pictures, and it has also secured multiple original IPs from popular web novels, webtoons, and novels that could potentially become converted into video format.
Dexter Studios’ CEOs Kim Wook and Kang Jong-ik said, “Once again, we sincerely thank everyone for coming out to theaters across the country in-person to support Escape from Mogadishu despite the difficult conditions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. We were able to achieve such meaningful results thanks to our audience.” They added, “We promise to do our best in delivering high-quality content that feels unique and exclusive to Dexter Studios.”
Meanwhile, Escape from Mogadishu won the greatest number of categories (six categories in total) at the Blue Dragon Film Awards. Aside from winning Best Picture, the film won the Top Box Office Seller Awards, Best Director Award (Ryoo Seung-wan), Best Supporting Actor Award (Heo Jun-ho), Best Art Design Award (Kim Bo-mook), and the Popularity Award (Koo Gyo-hwan). The Best Technical Award went to the Netflix original “Space Sweepers” (2021), which captured viewers from all over the world earlier this year. Dexter Studios also worked on Space Sweepers – it processed 1,304 cuts out of more than 2,000 cuts using VFX (70%) to improve the final visual presentation of the movie.
