It’s shaping up to be a major year for South Korean cinema as Hong Sang-soo and Bong Joon Ho get ready for Berlinale premieres of their latest work and later this year we’ll see the premiere of Park Chan-wook’s next feature No Other Choice. With filming kicking off last August and now having just wrapped on January 15 after five months of filming, the first images have now arrived for one of our most-anticipated films of 2025.
Adapting Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, which Costa-Gavras first adapted in 2005, the black comedy thriller follows a man laid off from the paper company he worked at for 25 years. Some time later and still jobless, he hits on a solution: to genuinely eliminate his competition. Adapted by Park Chan-wook, Lee Kyung-mi (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, The Truth Beneath), Don McKellar (The Sympathizer), and Lee Ja-hye (Decision to Leave, The Handmaiden), the cast includes Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-won, and Yoo Yeon-seok.
“I think it’s been about 17 years since I started writing the script for this movie. I’m so touched that I’ve finally finished filming the work that I’ve wanted to make for a long time,” Park told Korean media outlets. “I’ll work hard on the post-production to make a movie that everyone who participated in can feel a sense of accomplishment.”
See the first look and a behind-the-scenes image below courtesy of CJ ENM.
