A new trailer for Hope, Na Hong-jin's return to filmmaking after roughly a decade, confirms a September 9 North American release from Neon, following a July 15 debut in South Korea through Plus M Entertainment.
The footage sets up a police chief (Hwang Jung-min) and officer (Hoyeon) investigating a creature tearing through the fictional border town of Hope Harbor, near the DMZ, while a band of hunters led by Zo In-sung's character tracks it into the surrounding forest.
This early footage moves past a straightforward monster-hunt premise: closing shots reveal an alien spacecraft crossing the sky above the devastated village, confirming Hope as a science fiction story rather than a grounded creature feature. That widens the cast beyond the Korean leads to include Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton in supporting roles, a scope not evident from earlier reports.
Hope follows The Wailing (2016) and The Chaser before that, both defined by slow-building dread that curdles into violence. At a reported $33 million budget, described as the most expensive Korean production made to date, the film premiered in competition at Cannes in May, where it received a six-minute standing ovation, an unusually long response even by festival standards.
Critical reaction out of Cannes split sharply, with some reviews calling the back half an overlong swerve into creature-feature excess and others defending the tonal whiplash as the point. This early trailer plays that gamble straight, hinting at a slow-burn police procedural that detonates into alien spectacle, though whether that structure holds up over a full runtime remains an open question ahead of wider release.
