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Park Chan-wook, the Award-winning Korean filmmaker behind The Vengeance Trilogy, Thirst, and Stoker, has just wrapped principal photography on his latest feature, No Other Choice, Variety reports today.

The film began filming in August 2024 and is slated for release sometime later this year.

No Other Choice is an adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s mystery thriller The Ax and follows “a middle-aged man named Man-soo who embarks on a determined job hunt after being unexpectedly terminated from his position at a paper company.”

The novel’s synopsis gives a fuller picture: “Burke Devore is a middle-aged manager at a paper company when the cost-cutting ax falls, and he is laid off. Eighteen months later and still unemployed, he puts a new spin on his job search — with agonizing care, Devore finds the seven men in the surrounding area who could take the job that rightfully should be his, and systematically kills them.

Passion Project

Award-winning Korean helmer Park Chan-wook has completed principal photography on his latest feature “No Other Choice,” distributor Cj Enm revealed Tuesday, alongside a first look for the project. The film, which began filming in August 2024, is slated for release later this year. The project marks Park’s first film directorial effort since his critically acclaimed “Decision to Leave” (2022), which earned him Best Director honors at Cannes.

Adapted from Donald E. Westlake’s mystery novel “The Ax,” the story follows a middle-aged man named Man-soo who embarks on a determined job hunt after being unexpectedly terminated from his position at a paper company. “Squid Game” star Lee Byung-hun takes on the lead role of Man-soo, while “Crash Landing on You” lead Son Ye-jin portrays his resilient wife A-ra. The stellar ensemble cast includes Lee Sung-min (“Handsome Guys”), Yeom Hye-ran (“The Glory”), Cha Seung-won (“Believer 2”), Yoo Yeon-seok (“Hospital Playlist...

Exclusive: North America is getting its latest free streaming service later this month. Mometu, which is marketing itself as a “hand curated” on-demand live streaming platform, will launch on August 19 and has secured free streaming rights to South Korean feature The Policeman’s Lineage.

The service will launch with a slate of legacy films and TV series as Dragnet, Bonanza, Batman, Jackie Chan-starrer The 36 Crazy Fists, Apache Ross, documentary Blues on Beale, Sandra Bullock’s Hangmen, Herman Yau action-thriller Shock Wave 2, Nollywood director Okey Ifeanyi’s Long Walk to Truth and The Gods, which Mykel Shannon Jenkins (Paper Tigers) directed, starred in and wrote.

In September, it will add the exclusive AVoD premiere of Kyu-maan Lee’s crime thriller feature The Policeman’s Lineage, starring Woo-sik Choi (Parasite), Jin-woong Cho (The Handmaiden), Myeong-hoon Park (Parasite) and Hee-soon Park (Apple TV+’s Dr. Brain). The film centers on Choi Min-Jae (Choi...

Parasite’s Choi Woo-sik stars in director Kyu-mann Lee’s riveting crime drama The Policeman’s Lineage, premiering on Cable and Digital Rental/Purchase this June.

Synopsis: Parasite’s Woo-sik Choi stars as Choi Min-Jae, a rookie police officer and man ofprinciple, who is asked to join Park Gang-Yoon, the chief of a special investigations team with an unrivaled arrest record. The young rookie soon discovers the superior record includes corrupt methods. Together, these two very different policemen are plunged into a massive case that threatens to tear the force apart.

Cast: Woo-sik Choi (Parasite), Cho Jin-woong (The Handmaiden), Park Myeong-hoon (Parasite), and Hee-soon Park (Apple TV+’s Dr. Brain)

Credit: The Policeman’s Lineage is directed by Kyu-mann Lee (Wide Awake), produced by Han-seung Lee (The Tower), and executive produced by Hyun-joo Jung. The production team includes production designer Chae Kyoung-sun (Squid Game), editor Nam Na-young (Squid Game) costume designer...

Police departments, and particularly the narcotics department, have often made good fodder for the thriller genre. Director Lee Kyoo-man showed that he was more than adept in the thriller genre in his second feature, the based-on-a-true-story “Children…”. For his third production “The Policeman’s Lineage”, he looks at the police bureau and the narcotics department in a film that is based off Japanese novel “Keikan no Chi” by mystery fiction writer Joh Sasaki, already the subject of a Japanese tv adaptation.

“The Policeman’s Lineage” is screening at Florence Korea Film Festival

The son of a late police officer, Choi Min-jae is an upright police detective who aims to live and die by the police code of conduct. After the death of a colleague, he is recruited by Internal Affairs commissioner Hwang In-ho, who suspects narcotics chief Park Kang-yoon to be involved in the officer’s death. Park is the exact opposite of Choi,...

Almost two years since “Parasite” won a handful of Oscars, the impact of Covid has meant that the Korean theatrical sector has been largely unable to capitalize on the trickle-down effect of those wins.

Its current malaise stands in contrast to the pandemic windfalls enjoyed by other parts of the Korean entertainment biz — think BTS, Blackpink, “Squid Game” and the latest streaming phenomenon “All of Us Are Dead.”

The current year potentially holds great things for Korean film, with nearly all of the country’s top-name directors having completed works, but the prospect remains tantalizingly out of reach.

And the longer the hard times continue, the less likely a return to the old normal becomes. That is especially true in a market like Korea, where theatrical revenues typically account for the majority of a feature movie’s anticipated revenues.

Korean movie theaters attempted a return to normal in the fourth...

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” was gifted a sixth successive victory at the South Korean box office in a weekend with no releases of commercially significant films.

“Spider-Man” played out to a lowball $1.23 million haul between Friday and Sunday. That was only 18% down on its previous weekend score and lifted its running total since release on Dec. 15, 2021, to $60.3 million.

It also kept a substantial lead over its rivals, with a 28% market share, ahead of “Sing 2” in second place with a score of $863,000 and a market share of 20%.

The aggregate nationwide box office for the weekend, however, fell deeper into the doldrums. It slipped from $5.99 million to $4.34 million.

Korean title “Special Delivery” earned $744,000 in third place, down from its $1.33 million opening a week earlier. After two weekends, it has accumulated $3.20 million.

Another Korean-made hopeful, “The Policeman’s Lineage” held on to fourth place with $492,000 in its third weekend. Since releasing on Jan.