Disney+ Shares Interview Featuring “Elemental” Director Peter Sohn and “Moving” Director Park Inje

Disney+ has shared a new video featuring a very special discussion between two directors sharing their experience bringing their cultural inspiration into their work.

What’s Happening:

  • Disney+ has shared a new video featuring Peter Sohn, the director of Pixar’s Elemental and Park Inje, the director of Hulu’s Moving.
  • Together, the pair discuss how their shared Korean culture inspires their work in animation and live-action film.

  • Set in Element City, where Fire-, Water-, Earth- and Air-residents live together, Elemental introduces Ember, a tough, quick-witted and fiery young woman, whose friendship with a fun, sappy, go-with-the-flow guy named Wade challenges her beliefs about the world they live in.
  • The film is largely inspired by Peter Sohn’s life, growing up in New York City, with two Korean immigrant parents, who (like Ember’s in the film) opened their own grocery store. The film was also inspired by his wife, a non-Korean woman, and all the culture clash that came alongside it.
  • Both of his parents passed away while making the film, and ahead of Elemental’s release last year, Sohn tweeted a handwritten note to his parents, sharing more about the cultural inspiration of his film.

  • In Hulu’s Moving, we go back to the 1990s, where South Korea’s National Security Planning Agency has established a black ops team of superpowered individuals. Tasked with carrying out classified missions, members of this elite unit used their powers to defend the country and achieve the impossible on a daily basis. Despite their successes, one day the team suddenly went dark, dispersing around the country, never to be heard from again.
  • A few decades later, Bongseok, a boy who could float before he could walk, and Huisoo, a girl who survived a horrific car crash unscathed, end up at the same school, quickly becoming close after confiding their secrets in each other and discovering there are more people like them out in the world. While life seems relatively carefree for the teenagers, a mysterious delivery driver named Frank begins murdering people with powers across Seoul.

  • In the video above, Park shares that his projects are a bit different, sharing that he has lived in South Korea for his entire life, and he didn’t aspire to make an international hit with Moving, saying that “I just wanted to show real Korean high schoolers who are actually living that Korean high school life. I just wanted to put that out there.”
  • Regardless, Sohn sees similarities between the projects, adding that once he saw Moving, “it was the hardship from our parents, all the work that they were doing, and I got hooked in because that’s all we were doing for Elemental for the seven years. Just trying to honor the same thing. The same struggles that our parents made.”
  • You can watch the full discussion between the directors above, and check out Elemental on Disney+, and Moving on Hulu.

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Tony Betti
Originally from California where he studied a dying artform (hand-drawn animation), Tony has spent most of his adult life in the theme parks of Orlando. When he’s not writing for LP, he’s usually watching and studying something animated or arguing about “the good ole’ days” at the parks.