Mr. Go (Korean: 미스터 고; Hanja: 大明猩; RR: Miseuteo Go) is a 2013 South Korean sport-comedy film written and directed by Kim Yong-hwa based on Huh Young-man‘s 1984 comic The 7th Team (Korean: 제7구단).[1][2] About a gorilla who becomes a baseball superstar and his 15-year-old female manager, it stars Xu Jiao and Sung Dong-il.[3][4] Mr. Go was the first South Korean film to be fully shot in 3D.[5] A co-production between South Korea and China, it was released simultaneously in both countries on July 17 and 18, respectively.Young circus ringmaster Wei Wei has only bat-swinging gorilla Ling Ling to depend on as her only family member and friend, when her grandfather dies in the Great Sichuan earthquake, leaving behind an insurmountable debt.Mr. Go 2013
When a loan shark threatens to sell Ling Ling and the circus kids to cover the debt, Wei Wei has no choice but to allow Ling Ling to be scouted in the Korean Baseball League by the materialistic sports agent Sung. Ling Ling, now dubbed “Mr. Go,” becomes an instant hit with fans and leads his team Doosan Bears to a miraculous winning streak.
Kim Yong-hwa, director of box-office hits 200 Pounds Beauty (2006) and Take Off (2009), decided to adapt Huh Young-man‘s 28-year-old comic after seeing the YouTube video of Christian the lion, which demonstrated that humans are capable of taming animals. But for the film to work, the gorilla had to look like a living creature. Kim decided to shoot entirely in 3D, and of the 2,000 shots in the film, 1,000 are special effects shots of the gorilla Ling Ling. For four years, a team of more than 500 animators and CG professionals led by visual effects director Jeong Seong-jin[9] developed motion capture technology, facial motion capture technology and a digital fur production program to make the gorilla as realistic as possible, followed by another year of editing. The images were so precise and delicate that all the 3.8 million hairs on Ling Ling could sway with the wind.[10][11][12]