Cannes (France) (AFP) – 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.
Issued on: 18/05/2026 - 07:26
2 min Reading time
Na's latest offering is South Korea's biggest budget film ever © Thibaud MORITZ / AFP
"Hope" by Na, whose low-budget horror movie "The Wailing" 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 told AFP in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival where the film premiered on Sunday night."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 Korea's Plus M Entertainment and a budget of around 30 million euros ($35 million).The cost of "Hope" underlines the increasing resources available to South Korean directors whose hit films such as "Parasite" and "KPop Demon Hunters", as well as TV series like "Squid Game" have turned the country into a global entertainment centre.
