South Korean director Na Hong-Jin made his first appearance at San Diego Comic-Con this week to preview his highly anticipated alien action film Hopereveal new recordings.
He credited the casting of Play octopus breakout star Hoyeon as one of the best decisions he made to bring the decade-long passion project to the screen.
Before Na took the stage at Ballroom 20, played a short roll of his back catalog for the crowd spanning his 2008 debut The chaser by The Yellow Sea and The weeperall ready for Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy trains.
Introducing the tone of his new film, Na explained its relationship to his previous work: “Hope is a continuation in the form of the same metaphor and the same meaning, but in terms of style and thought and content is completely different.”
Hope set in the remote village of Hope Harbor, where a mysterious creature wreaks havoc on the local community, the police and local hunters who set out to track the beast are instead hunted.
Discussing how Hoyeon came to join the international cast, Na explained that co-star Hwang Jung-min was the one who first pushed for her casting as a tenacious police officer.
“He said if you meet her, you realize how special a person she is,” Na recalled, adding that he arranged to meet her soon after.
The director and star reportedly read through the script together over takeout, and she signed on soon after.
Hope premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year to strong reviews and currently holds an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes, featuring a sprawling international ensemble including 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 the film’s action-first priority ahead of its release, Na has previously said that the project marked a conscious departure from his earlier, more dialogue-heavy work: “The story had to be felt through the action. Without dialogue or description, the action itself had to carry what the film wants to say.”
Hope opens in US theaters on September 9.
