Na Hong-jin's 'Hope' hits 1 million viewers in 4 days — fastest of 2026 — amid distributor financial crisis

Hope (호프), Na Hong-jin's first feature in a decade, hit 1 million admissions on its 4th day of release — the fastest any film has reached that mark in 2026.

Pre-sales alone topped 500,000 tickets before opening. The film carried a production budget of approximately 70 billion won and pre-sold to more than 200 countries, including a Cannes deal, recovering roughly half its costs before a single domestic ticket was scanned. Break-even sits around 7 million viewers.

On paper, the numbers work. Behind the scenes, they don't. Plus M Entertainment's parent company, Megabox Joong Ang, entered corporate rehabilitation proceedings, freezing approximately 15 billion won in ticket settlement funds generated between early May and mid-June as rehabilitation claims. Showbox is already carrying 3.6 billion won in uncollected receivables as a result. Settlement funds from June 15 onwards will be paid normally.

Audience scores lag. The CGV Egg Index sits at 81%. Directors Lee Chang-dong, Bong Joon-ho, and Jang Jae-hyun are running relay audience Q&A sessions to close the gap. The lead cast is three weeks into a full promotional stage-greeting run.

A 70-billion-won film hitting its first million in four days while its distributor is in court-supervised restructuring is not a situation the industry has navigated before at this scale.