Highly anticipated local thriller “The Call” chose to follow the steps of crime thriller “Time to Hunt,” which skipped its theatrical release and went straight to Netflix in April.
“Since many movie fans have been waiting for the release of ‘The Call,’ we considered many different options for quite a long time, and finally came up with the decision to release it on Netflix. We see that it is the best way to present our movie to a wide variety of audiences,” Next Entertainment World, the film‘s distributor, spokesperson Kim Sun-ah told The Korea Herald.
“The Call,” which was originally set to be released in March, will now debut on the global OTT platform on Nov. 17. It is the debut feature film by director Lee Choong-hyun, who has won various awards, including the Jury prize at the 33rd Busan International Short Film Festival in 2016 and the best short-film award at the 11th Paris Korean Film Festival in 2017, with his short film “Bargain” (2015).
In Lee‘s upcoming mystery thriller, Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) finds an old phone and receives a call from a stranger named Yeong-sook (Jeon Jong-seo). The two women soon realize that they are living in the same house but in different times and become friends. However, after Yeong-sook finds out about her terrible future, she turns reckless and starts threatening Seo-yeon.
NEW admitted that it started considering the Netflix option partially because of the ongoing COVID-19 situation.
Some movie industry insiders view the possibility of reaching global audiences an important option that local distributors have when going straight to the global OTT platform.
“We also had global audiences in our mind when making our decision as Netflix presents films to 190 countries,” the NEW spokesperson said.
However, although “Time to Hunt” is now available in 190 countries, how it is performing in the global market is not clear.
“We do not have any data that we can provide to show how popular ‘Time to Hunt’ is among global audiences,“ a Netflix public relations staff told The Korea Herald. —The Korean Herald
