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Park Chan-wook‘s No Other Choice, which is shortlisted for the Oscar International Feature category this year, is poised to be the multi Cannes Film Festival-winning filmmaker’s biggest box office breakout at the North American office in his 34-year directing career.
Already, the dark comedy about a laid-off paper factory manager in Busan, South Korea, who literally begins to “take out” the competition has become Park’s highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office with $4.2 million surpassing his cult 2003 hit Oldboy ($2.4M lifetime). No Other Choice in its early limited run is holding extremely well in its New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Seattle plays, the latter a hub for Asian American moviegoers. The movie is pacing similar to A24s Past Lives ($11.3M) as well as Neon‘s own five-time Oscar winner Anora ($20.4M) at this point in time.
All of this per sources indicates No Other Choice is bound to reach a final domestic total in the teen-milions, becoming the second highest-grossing South Korean title at the domestic B.O. after Neon’s multi-Oscar-winning Parasite ($53.8M) and ahead of 2007’s Dragon Wars (at $10.9M). The movie is also drawing upscale sophisticated adults and twentysomethings. It has performed solidly in Phoenix, San Diego, Sacramento and Raleigh, NC. The pic, also been boosted by a play in Imax, is playing at 700 sites in its fourth weekend this Friday.
Should No Other Choice score an Oscar nomination next Thursday, it will rep Park’s first ever.
Worldwide, No Other Choice has a shot at taking out Director Park’s highest grossing movie at the global box office as a director, The Handmaiden, which counts north of $38M worldwide. Current running global cume on No Other Choice is close to $27M.
Park Chan-wook
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Tom Quinn, Neon’s CEO and co-founder, says that “Oldboy changed my entire career; the way I thought about film and what was possible.”
“I tried to buy Oldboy three times,” he tells Deadline. Initially that was during his exec days at Samuel Goldwyn in 2003, when he caught the movie in a smoke-filled room in Milan, Italy at the MIFED market. There were no seats available. “I stood there and watched and couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Quinn adds.
He immediately phoned the Goldwyns saying that they had to buy the movie, including the remake rights for David Lynch. Quinn ultimately won out with rights for the 20th anniversary rerelease in 2023, the pic grossing $1.75M of its domestic $2.4M cume (the rerelease outgrossing the original domestic release). The first time Quinn teamed with Park was on Bong Joon Ho’s 2013 sci-fi movie, Snowpiercer. Park produced that movie. which grossed well north of $82M around the world.
“Every A-list filmmaker will talk about Director Park as either someone who inspired them to become filmmakers or a reference in their own work. Even Bong Joon Ho has mentioned that without Director Park, he wouldn’t have the career that he has,” Quinn said.
No Other Choice is based on Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax. South Korea’s Oscar entry received a nine-minute standing ovation at its world premiere in the main competition at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, then went on to win the inaugural International People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. Neon took rights ahead of its festival run.
No Other Choice also counts a Best Pic nom from the Gotham Awards and a Foreign Language nom from Critics Choice. Both awards bodies also nominated the adapted screenplay credited to Park, Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee and Don McKellar.