Michael Fassbender’s Gritty New Sci-Fi Epic Is Officially Releasing Early

Michael Fassbender’s new sci-fi movie Hope is coming to theaters early.

2026’s Hope is the first movie from famed South Korean writer-director Na Hong-jin in 10 years, since his seminal horror movie The Wailing (which was in turn his first film in six years after 2010’s The Yellow Sea). The movie follows humanity battling against an alien invasion in the remote town of Hope Harbor, which is located near the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. It features a star-studded cast of Korean-speaking and English-speaking actors, including Michael Fassbender (Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, X-Men: First Class and its sequels), Hwang Jung-min (The Wailing), Hoyeon (Squid Game), and Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina).

NEON, who will be distributing Hope in the United States, has officially announced that the Na Hong-jin movie will be debuting early with a series of premium large format screenings on Labor Day (Monday, September 7). This brings the movie to theaters a full two days earlier than its planned mid-week release on Wednesday, September 9. Before it goes wide on the ninth, Hope will play on 175 Dolby, 4DX, ScreenX, Barco HDR, D-BOX and Dolby Atmos screens nationwide in regions including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas.

This is the same move that NEON made when promoting Osgood Perkins’ Stephen King adaptation The Monkey in early 2025, which went on to gross roughly four times its budget in North America alone. This could service Hope twofold. In addition to allowing it to build buzz with these early premium large format screenings before it rolls out in more theaters, it gives the movie access to Labor Day audiences, many of whom do not have work on Monday.

Of the four Stephen King movies released in 2025, The Monkey ($68.9 million) was the second highest-grossing worldwide by a hair, beating out The Long Walk ($63.2 million) and The Life of Chuck ($21.4 million) but falling slightly behind The Running Man ($69.5 million).

In addition to emphasizing its status as a must-see spectacle, this early release underscores the fact that Hope is making a major play for American moviegoers. While Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing has become a renowned classic in the United States, it only grossed $786,663 in the domestic marketplace during its theatrical run. Because Hope is nearly six times more expensive, with a reported budget of $46 million, it is important to connect with audiences in domestic theaters in order to help recoup that investment.

The movie’s casting of English-language actors (a roster that also includes Bones and All star Taylor Russell) is one move that seems designed to help it appeal to a broader global audience outside of South Korea, as is its more action-oriented approach to storytelling. So far, it is largely being helped along by critics, whose early Hope reviews have earned the movie a solid 77% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

However, these premium large format screenings could build much more buzz than a Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, allowing Hope to build momentum that the director’s 10-year-old The Wailing is too far in the past to fully activate.

Ultimately, it remains to be seen how Hope performs in U.S. theaters. Even with this early premium large format release, it will be facing competition from homegrown English-language titles, including Labor Day weekend new releases such as Adam Wingard’s A24 action-horror movie Onslaught, the survival thriller sequel Fall 2: Deadpoint, and the historical crime drama By Any Means (which co-stars Mark Wahlberg and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II).