Park Chan-wook‘s No Other Choice, which is shortlisted as one of Oscar’s international films, is poised to be the multi-Cannes Film Festival award winning filmmaker’s big box office breakout at the North American office in his 34-year directing career. Should No Other Choice score an Oscar nomination next Thursday, it will rep Director Park’s first ever.
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 Director Park’s highest grossing movie at the domestic box office with $4.2M, surpassing his 2003 cult hit Oldboy ($2.4M lifetime). No Other Choice in its early limited run is holding extremely well in its NY, LA, DC and Seattle, Washington plays, the latter a hub for Asian American moviegoers. The movie is pacing quite similar to A24s Past Lives ($11.3M) as well as NEON‘s own 5x 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 in the teens, 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. The movie also performed solid in Phoenix, San Diego, Sacramento and Raleigh, NC. No Other Choice was further boosted by a play in Imax. The pic is playing at 700 sites in its fourth weekend this Friday.
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.
Tom Quinn, CEO and co-Founder of NEON, 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 where 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 re-release in 2023, the pic grossing $1.75M of its domestic $2.4M cume (the re-release outgrossing the original domestic release). The first time Quinn teamed with Director Park was on the Bong Joon Ho 2013 directed 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.”
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.. The pic went on to win the inaugural International People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. NEON took rights to the movie 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. Critics Choice and the Gothams also nominated the adapted screenplay credited to Park, Lee Kyoung-mi, Jahye Lee and Don McKellar.