20 Most Anticipated Sci-Fi Movies Arriving In 2026

UK release date: Summer TBC

South Korean cinema has become a major player globally over the past few decades, following the country’s relaxation on film censorship in the ‘90s and the resulting boom in edgy, extreme, and transgressive features. While the country’s bigger names like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho get the lion’s share of global media coverage, there are plenty more talented directors and screenwriters toiling away and putting out some killer pictures.

Writer-director Na Hong-jin is just that, having served up 2016’s exceptional police horror The Wailing and 2010’s double-triple-crossing action thriller The Yellow Sea. Next year, he’s back at it, and this time he’s assembled a mixed cast of Korean and Western stars for a bombastic, mixed-language alien movie.

Hope is set in the remote Hope Harbor, near the Korean DMZ, where local police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) goes in search of a tiger. But what he finds disrupts the entire community and spirals into a mystery that brings the townsfolk face-to-face with something larger than themselves. Expect Zo In-sung and model-turned actress Jung Ho-yeon (who we know from Squid Game season one) opposite Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, and other familiar faces as the strange, English-speaking visitors.