Hope, South Korea’s most expensive film, underscores growing film ambition

CANNES, France - Acclaimed director Na Hong-jin has unveiled South Korea’s highest budget film ever: A blood-splattered sci-fi thriller featuring killer extraterrestrials based on real-life couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander.

Hope by Na, whose low-budget horror movie The Wailing (2016) became a huge hit in his home country, was able to give free rein to his dark imagination in this gory tale of alien invasion.

“It’s the most expensive film in the history of Korean cinema,” Na, 51, told AFP in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival where the film premiered on May 17.

“It’s a film that really required a very, very large budget because of the special effects, the design, the actors.”

Despite having a genre-defying concept that was hard to sell initially – it skips between thriller, sci-fi, horror and comedy – he received backing from South Korea’s Plus M Entertainment and a budget of around 30 million euros (S$44 million).

The cost of Hope underlines the increasing resources available to South Korean directors whose hit films such as Parasite (2019) and KPop Demon Hunters (2025), as well as TV series like Squid Game (2021 to 2025) have turned the country into a global entertainment centre.

Although married acting couple Fassbender and Vikander, stars of films from 12 Years A Slave (2013) to Ex Machina (2014), are listed on the film’s cast, many fans might struggle to recognise them.

Their acting has been transformed by special effects, with all the recognisable lead roles performed by bankable South Korean stars including Hwang Jung-min, as well as Jung Ho-yeon from Squid Game.

The all-action film, full of bodily fluid and gunfire, revolves around a clash between the residents of a remote town close to the frontier between South and North Korea and terrifying visitors from another planet.

With its themes of conflict and the incompetence of local officials, Na said he had “the wars that we know at the moment and the political situation that we had” at the time he was writing the screenplay.

Korean wave

Hope, intended as the first film in a series, is one of 22 films competing for the prestigious Palme d’Or prize for best film in Cannes.

It is a first by Na in 10 years since The Wailing, which also focused on a remote location struggling with a mystery arrival.

The Cannes jury in 2026 is headed by a South Korean director for the first time, Park Chan-wook, the maker of arthouse classics such as Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016) and Decision To Leave (2022).

“Korea is playing a role as one of the central hubs of the film world, and I believe this is a movement befitting the time,” he told AFP on May 11.

“It makes me think of a lot of the predecessors who were truly outstanding but never had the opportunity to be recognised internationally,” he added.

Park, 62, insisted that he would not favour his compatriot, Na.

“Some even joked that I might go out of my way to be harsher on a Korean film, because it wouldn’t look good if I appeared to be favouring it,” he said. “I intend to judge everything as fairly and objectively as possible.” AFP