According to the Korea Film Council (KOFIC), at noon on July 17, the movie "Hope" (tentatively translated: Hope) attracted a total of 1,003,960 viewers.
This is currently the movie released in 2026 that reached the milestone of 1 million viewers fastest, surpassing the recent blockbuster "Colony" and the record-breaking movie "The King's Warden".
Released in theaters in Korea on July 15, meaning "Hope" took less than three days to reach this milestone.
The work is directed by Na Hong Jin, set in Hopo port, located near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
The story begins when police chief Bum Seok (Hwang Jung Min) and local people, including Sung Ki (Jo In Sung), receive a report about a tiger appearing in the village.
Since then, the whole village has fallen into a state of emergency when facing a truth beyond imagination.
Besides Hwang Jung Min and Jo In Sung, the film also stars Jung Ho Yeon and an international cast including Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton.
It is known that this is the most expensive project in the history of Korean cinema with a budget exceeding 50 billion won (33 million USD) and many people call it the "last salvation" for domestic box office revenue.
According to the director, he intentionally restrained the element of violence compared to previous works. Therefore, right from the script development stage, he oriented action scenes around guns - a weapon with great lethality but still capable of creating dramatic scenes.
