6 Reasons Why 2026's Hope Could Be Korea's Next Global Phenomenon

Na Hong-jin’s new movie Hope was one of the biggest sensations in Cannes this year.

Its success at the festival has got us wondering if it has the potential to become the next South Korean movie to become a global cultural phenomenon. As its September release date approaches, we look at six reasons why 2026's Hope has 'next big thing' written all over it in the list below.

1. Korean Culture Has Never Been More Dominant

With artists like BTS and KATSEYE to TV shows like Squid Game (not to mention the food and beauty products) seemingly taking turns at world domination, South Korea’s growing influence on the cultural landscape has been one of the most significant global trends of the last decade.

When it comes to movies, that rise started a little sooner in the early '00s, with the boom in Korean horror that was spearheaded by movies like Oldboy and The Grudge. That eventually led to the phenomenon that was Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, a movie that won the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2019 before going on to an historical Best Picture win at the 2020 Academy Awards. 

With The Yellow Sea and The Wailing, Na Hong-jin can claim to have played his part in that surge, and the decade-long wait between his previous movie and Hope surely only increases its chances of doing something big when it comes to theatres later this year.

2. Hope Genuinely Rocked Cannes This Year

Don’t let reports of a seven-minute standing ovation fool you: Hope was a genuine sensation in Cannes this year and was perhaps the only movie in competition that got everybody at the festival talking. It’s also important to note that its premiere—somewhat sadistically, I might add—was programmed in an unforgiving 10 pm time slot. This meant that it ended close to 1 am, so the fact that the audience was willing to sacrifice seven more minutes of sleep should not be sniffed at.

Hope also arrived at around the halfway point of the festival this year, much like Julia Ducournau’s Titane and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance had done in recent years. The festival has a notable habit of doing this with the few genre films that get programmed into competition each year: a tactic that makes them feel even more like adrenaline shots among the competition’s more weighty and political movies.

For all that, the film was admittedly divisive, but even its detractors would confess that the experience of watching it was highly memorable. It might be asking a great deal for it to have anything like the same impact as Ducournau or Fargeat’s sensational movies, but it’s certainly in the same lineage.

3. It’s an Action Movie With a Capital 'A'

It says everything you need to know about the relentless nature of the action in this movie (especially in the first hour) that more than a few critics at Cannes were quick to draw comparisons to Mad Max: Fury Road. I wouldn’t go that far, personally speaking, but for at least the opening sequence the movie’s pulpy vibe and breathless pace has something of the Road Warrior’s DNA about it. 

That basically unbroken action set piece takes the viewer on a wild chase, from a police inspection of a dead body through the wreckage of a small town, all the way up to seeing the creature for the first time. It’s a brilliantly executed sequence, with sets that look like something out of Spielberg's War of the Worlds, and even if the monster’s reveal is a little underwhelming at first (the special effects frankly let the movie down at times), the quality of the filmmaking from an action standpoint is remarkable. 

To put it simply, Na Hong-jin knows how to string the audience along. And for this alone, I will not be surprised to see it top some critics’ year-end lists. 

4. Hope Has Indie Powerhouses Neon and Mubi In its Corner

When it comes to distributing the film, Na can take considerable confidence in having Neon and Mubi alongside it—the two companies are set to handle the film’s release in English-speaking and international territories respectively. 

Since acquiring the rights for Parasite in 2018, Neon has managed to pick the Palme d’Or winner in every Cannes since—a seven-movie (and counting) run that will probably be analysed for years to come and likely never beaten. The indie streamer Mubi might have a patchier recent history when it comes to distribution—despite hitting the jackpot with The Substance in 2024, the Jennifer Lawrence movie Die My Love, and Docournau’s Titane follow-up, Alpha, both struggled last year.

Hope (a stylish action flick with no shortage of ecstatically quotable reviews) will surely be a much easier sell.

5. Hope Has A-List Stars, but Not Like You’ve Seen Them Before

If you walk into Hope after seeing Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander's names in the credits, you’ll probably start to wonder where they are by the time that the movie reaches the halfway point.

The A-list couple’s name are still at the top of the cast list on IMDb, and the promise of their first time on screen together since The Light Between Oceans generated plenty of buzz in the leadup to Cannes, but their appearances, without giving too much away, are not what you’d expect at all—a factor that I think will turn out to be more of a quirky feature than a bug when it comes to releasing it.

Hope’s other big star is the Korean model and actress Jung Ho-yeon, who blew up internationally after her breakout performance in Squid Game in 2021. In Hope, Jung plays a police officer. She also gets an awesome entrance scene, arriving heroically about halfway through the first action sequence—a moment that drew a big applause at the movie’s premiere and press screening. 

6. Hope Is a Great Auteur's First Movie In a Decade

When Na came to Cannes in 2016 for the midnight premiere of The Wailing, critics were quick to compare the movie to Bong Joon-ho. Parasite was still three years away at that point, of course, but Na’s movie—with its bumbling police detective protagonist and eerie mix of crime, horror and dark comedy elements—shared enough DNA with Bong’s earlier classics (especially Memories of Murder) to warrant the link.

If you'd told the audience that night that it would be a decade before Na released his next project, few would have believed it, but a myriad of factors simply got in the way—including a demanding pre-production period and the familiar delays of Covid-19. 

The return of such an exciting name in world cinema should help it to hit the ground running when it comes to theatres in the US and UK in early September.