South Korean director Na Hong-Jin made his first appearance at San Diego Comic-Con this week to preview his long-awaited alien action film. Hoperevealing new images.
He gave credit to the casting of Squid Game rising star Hoyeon as one of the best decisions he made in bringing this decade-long passion project to the screen.
Before Na took the stage at Ballroom 20, a short reel of her back catalogue, covering her 2008 debut, was played for the audience. The hunter through The Yellow Sea and the lamenteverything ready for Ozzy Osbourne crazy train.
Introducing the tone of his new film, Na explained its relationship to his previous work: “Hope It is a continuation in terms of the same metaphor and the same meaning, but in terms of style, thought and content it is completely different.”
Hope is set in the remote town of Hope Harbor, where a mysterious creature wreaks havoc on the community, with police and local hunters setting out to track the beast and instead being hunted down.
When talking about how Hoyeon came to join the international cast, Na explained that her co-star Hwang Jung-min was the one who first pushed for her to be cast as a tenacious police officer.
“She said that if you meet her, you realize how special a person she is,” Na recalled, adding that he had arranged to meet her shortly after.
The director and star reportedly read the script together while preparing takeout, and she signed on shortly after.
Hope premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year to rave reviews, currently has an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and features an expanding international ensemble that includes Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Taylor Russell, Cameron Britton, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender, the latter three playing the film’s alien creatures.
Speaking about prioritizing the action film ahead of its release, Na has previously said that the project marked a deliberate departure from his previous, more dialogue-heavy work: “The story had to be felt through the action. Without dialogue or description, the action itself had to convey what the film wants to say.”
Hope opens in US theaters on September 9.
