Hope Opening Record: Opening-Day Audience Reaches 333,000 for Na Hong-jin’s New Film

Na Hong-jin’s new film Hope drew about 333,000 viewers on its official opening day, July 15, 2026, making its first-day audience the central figure behind the Hope Opening Record. Multiple Korean outlets reported that the film ranked No. 1 at the daily box office and surpassed the previous highest opening score of 2026, held by Goonche.

Opening-Day Audience Puts Hope at No. 1

The opening-day count was reported with slight variation across outlets, but all available figures place Hope above 333,000 admissions for July 15. ChosunBiz, citing the Korean Film Council’s integrated ticketing network, reported 333,899 viewers on the official release date and a cumulative total of 351,257 including advance events.¹ Edaily reported 333,918 opening-day viewers and 351,276 cumulative viewers, while also noting that the film took first place at the box office.²

SBS Entertainment News, through Daum, also reported 333,918 viewers nationwide on July 15, based on the Korean Film Council’s integrated network.³ CBS No Cut News gave a closely aligned figure of 333,915 viewers and described the result as both the day’s No. 1 box-office performance and the highest opening score of 2026.⁴

The figures establish a clear direction despite minor differences in outlet-by-outlet reporting: Hope opened with more than 333,000 viewers and immediately led the Korean box office on its release date. The available source material does not provide a single reconciled final figure beyond the outlet-reported counts, so the most precise summary is that the first-day audience stood at roughly 333,900 to 333,918 viewers.

Record Compared With Goonche and Earlier Na Hong-jin Films

The key comparison in the available reports is with Goonche, which had held the year’s previous best opening mark. ChosunBiz and Edaily both reported that Hope passed Goonche’s opening-day figure of 199,762 viewers.¹² SBS Entertainment News reported the earlier benchmark as 199,759 viewers, a slight difference from the other cited numbers, but likewise stated that Hope exceeded it.³

The margin is substantial under either figure. Using the commonly reported Goonche benchmark of 199,762 viewers and the lower reported Hope figure of 333,899 viewers, Hope opened more than 134,000 admissions ahead of the previous 2026 high. The source material does not attribute that performance to any single cause, so the comparison should be read as a box-office result rather than a confirmed explanation of audience behavior.

Reports also place the result within Na Hong-jin’s own filmography. CBS No Cut News said the opening-day result surpassed those of the director’s previous films The Chaser, The Yellow Sea, and The Wailing.⁴ SBS Entertainment News included a specific comparison with The Wailing, reporting that Hope was above that film’s first-day figure of 310,000 viewers.³ MBN similarly reported that Hope exceeded the first-day audiences of The Chaser, The Yellow Sea, and The Wailing.⁶

That makes the opening not only a 2026 box-office marker but also a notable first-day performance within the director’s reported release history. The available sources do not include full lifetime totals, screen counts, or demographic breakdowns, so the comparison is limited to first-day admissions.

Advance Sales and Release-Day Context

Advance demand was another figure cited across reports. Edaily said Hope had surpassed 600,000 advance ticket reservations before release.² Weekly Kyunghyang reported that the film had secured 600,000 advance reservations and that its pre-release reservation rate exceeded 68%.⁵ Those numbers provide context for the strong first-day turnout, though the source material does not state how many advance reservations converted into opening-day attendance.

Weekly Kyunghyang also reported that another July 15 release, Minions & Monsters, ranked second that day with 31,726 viewers.⁵ That figure indicates the scale of Hope’s opening-day lead among the cited same-day releases, but the provided material does not include the full daily top ten or all competing titles.

The film’s reception context in the sources includes short quoted reactions from Korean directors Bong Joon-ho and Lee Chang-dong at a GV event. Bong described Hope as “a film bursting with spirit and madness,” while Lee called it “literally a mad film.”⁵ These remarks are included in the source material as promotional or event-related comments and do not replace the reported ticketing data as the basis for the opening record.

The available reports consistently show that Hope opened on July 15, 2026 with roughly 333,000 first-day admissions, ranked first at the daily box office, and moved ahead of the year’s previous opening benchmark set by Goonche. While outlet figures differ slightly, the overall record claim is supported across the cited coverage: Hope delivered the strongest reported opening-day audience of 2026 to date.

About the Author

Cloi Lee

Author

View All Posts