Ha Jung-woo is taking on his third challenge as a ‘director’. The film ‘Lobby’, in which he directed and starred, will be released in theaters this spring. With the two films he previously directed failing at the box office, he is currently busy filming his fourth directorial project, and the success or failure of ‘Lobby’ has become even more important.

Two box office failures, third challenge

‘Lobby’, which will be released on April 2, is a black comedy that tells the story of a startup CEO who only knows research starting his first lobby golf in his life to win a 4 trillion won national project. It stars Ha Jung-woo, Kim Eui-sung, Lee Dong-hwi, Park Byung-eun, Choi Si-won, and Cha Joo-young.

This film, in particular, is garnering attention from movie fans as it is Ha Jung-woo‘s first film in 10 years in which he wrote and directed the screenplay. Ha Jung-woo received attention by being given the title of ‘director’ long before actors who have recently transformed into directors, such as Lee Jung-jae and Kim Hee-won, with ‘Roller Coaster’ in 2013 and ‘The Three Musketeers’ in 2015.

However, the results of both of his previous directorial works were not good. ‘Roller Coaster’ drew favorable reviews from fans for its unique sense of humor, but only attracted 270,000 viewers (the break-even point of 400,000), and ‘Heo Sam-gwan’ failed at the box office with 950,000 viewers, less than a third of the break-even point (3 million), and even received harsh reviews.

He is currently filming his fourth directorial work, ‘People Upstairs’, which is scheduled to be released next year, and there is extraordinary interest from both inside and outside the industry in whether the film will be a box office success as well as in the opinions of critics and the public.

The First Golf Lobby Movie

In this situation, Ha Jung-woo could not hide his trembling heart as he attended the production report meeting held on the 4th, the first official event for ‘Lobby’. He said, “It took a long time to do my third work. In the meantime, I tried to do several works, but I couldn’t make them, so I had a lot of worries,“ he said. ”Then, the story of ‘Lobby’ came to mind, and I thought I had to do it. As a director, I feel more nervous and excited waiting for the release than when I was an actor and waiting for the release.“ He also didn‘t hide his confidence in the new film. In particular, ’Lobby‘ is expected to be a comedy that will make use of Ha Jung-woo’s unique sense of humor and ‘sweet words.’ It is also intriguing in that it is the first Korean film to deal with the world of lobby golf.

Ha Jung-woo said, ”Generally, you might think of a lobby as something that happens in a closed space, but I actually thought that a vast golf course is a very secretive space,“ and emphasized the reason he chose golf as the subject matter. ”Life doesn‘t always go as you want it to. Life is all coincidence. You’ll be able to find cinematic fun in coincidences.“


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.