'Hope' Re-Edit Becomes Korea's Fastest-Grossing Film Ever — SkimNews
SkimNews Take
A polarizing festival cut can double as free audience research: Na Hong-jin's re-edit converted critical dissonance into a reset that recoded the same footage for a receptive domestic market.
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- "Hope" premiered in Cannes competition as a 200-minute sci-fi/horror action film directed by Na Hong-jin and reportedly the highest-budgeted South Korean film ever made.
- Cannes reception split sharply — The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney called it an "instant cult classic," while IndieWire's David Ehrlich praised the first third but called the CGI creatures some of the worst he'd ever seen.
- Na Hong-jin kept editing after Cannes, and the re-edited version became South Korea's fastest-grossing film ever, selling 2.6 million tickets in five days.
- Neon acquired North American rights and will release the re-edited "Hope" on September 10.
- The re-edit trimmed only 4-5 minutes from the Cannes cut, removed specific scenes (a crane lifting a dead alien, Sung-ki's horseback forest scene), added Yang Bae (Eum Moon-suk) footage for comic relief, and overhauled sound design — the area Na said he did his most extensive work.
- Performance capture featured Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell as human-faced characters in monster-like exteriors, with Cameron Britton's Va'migere receiving a significant revision.
Why it matters: Na Hong-jin's decision to keep editing after Cannes — rather than ship the polarizing 200-minute cut — paid off when the revised version sold 2.6 million tickets in five days domestically. Neon now holds North American rights for a September 10 release, giving audiences the version Na was still tinkering with when critics first saw it.
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