'Walking Dead' Star Adapting 'Aquariums of Pyongyang' (Exclusive)

Steven Yeun will executive produce the Radar Pictures feature and star as Chol-Hwan.

The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun is setting his sights on the big screen.

Yeun is teaming with Radar Pictures to adapt Kang Chol-Hwan's autobiographical book The Aquariums of Pyongyang, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively. Yeun is attached to star as Chol-Hwan and exec produce the film, and will work alongside producers Ted Field, Mike Weber and Michael Napoliello in partnership with Sean Lee.

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Aquariums is set in North Korea, one of the last bastions of hardline Communism. Its leaders have kept a tight grasp on the one-party regime, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.

Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, the book is a record of one man's triumph over unbelievable adversity to expose the truths of North Korea to the modern world.

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Radar is the company behind Riddick, the Vin Diesel action movie, and Spring Breakers, the cult hit starring Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens.

For Yeun, who has been a regular on AMC's The Walking Dead since its inception, the role continues a slow and calculated push into movies. Aquariums joins his voice gig in Chew, the animated feature adaptation of the best-selling comic by John Layman and Rob Guillory. He next has the feature I Origins due in July.

Yeun is repped by Paradigm, Gotham Group/Principal Entertainment and attorney Adam Kaller.

The Walking Dead returns for its fifth season in October.