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After viewers maul quality of CGI tiger in 'The King's Warden,' studio says fixes forthcoming

Published: 11 Mar. 2026, 14:33 Updated: 11 Mar. 2026, 14:55

A scene from the historical drama film ″The King's Warden″ [SHOWBOX]

"The King's Warden" producers will fix the film's much-debated tiger computer-generated imagery (CGI) after facing backlash from audiences over the quality of the digital render.

“The computer graphics [CG] company said it would like to reflect an improved version at least when the film is released on television and streaming, so it is currently working on the graphics independently,” distributor Showbox said Wednesday. “It is still undecided how this will be reflected in the current theatrical version.”

Earlier, journalist Lim Soo-yeon said on her YouTube channel that the quality of the tiger CGI in the film was affected by a shortened production timeline.

“I heard the release date was moved slightly earlier than originally planned, which meant there wasn’t enough,” Lim said.

“The reaction at the blind screening was positive, and the team believed the film would be competitive during the Lunar New Year holiday season, so they decided to release it earlier than scheduled,” she said. “Because of that, the CG team is still continuing to revise the tiger scenes.”

“A film does not end with its theatrical release — there are also secondary rights and releases on other platforms to consider — so the CGI work is continuing with those in mind,” Lim added.

Since the film’s release, audiences have continued to point out that the CGI tiger was unconvincing. The tiger appears in two scenes: one when characters who are hunting are chased by a tiger and one when the main character, King Danjong (1441-1457), played by Park Ji-hoon, faces a tiger one-on-one.

Moviegoers walk past a poster of the historical drama film ″The King's Warden″ displayed on an electronic board at a theater in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on March 8. [NEWS1]

“The life of computer graphics is the amount of time invested and normally requires several months of work,” director Chang Hang-jun previously said. “To fully depict the tiger’s fur, the rendering time is enormous, and physically, there was not enough time to revise it.”

Directed by Chang, “The King’s Warden” tells the story of the deposed Danjong, who spends the final period of his life in exile in Yeongwol, Gangwon, forming bonds with locals including the village head Eom Heung-do, played by Yoo Hai-jin.

“The King’s Warden,” which opened on Feb. 4, surpassed 11.8 million cumulative viewers as of Tuesday.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY HYEON YE-SEUL [[email protected]]