Park Chan Wook is gearing up for a Christmas release

Following rave reviews for its film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, Neon has released a new trailer for writer-director Park Chan-wook’s film. There is no other choice.

Ahead of its limited theatrical release at Christmas ahead of its ubiquitous release in January, the new trailer for the South Korean black comedy shows Lee Byung-hun playing Yoo Man-soo, a down-on-his-luck family man who uses lethal means to control his career.

in There is no other choiceAfter celebrating 25 years as a health and safety officer at a paper mill in South Korea, Man-soo (Byung-hoon) falls to the ground when he is made redundant by the company’s new American owners. After several months of unemployment, Man-soo decides to take a radical new approach to his job search – by eliminating the competition.

Based on Donald Westlake’s 1997 American novel axChan-wook said at Deadline’s TIFF studio that he found “a lot of room to develop a bitter kind of comedy” from the book.

“So, I saw the potential of it,” Chan-wook said, noting that he added a “new hypothesis” in which Man-soo shares “more than one similarity” with each of his victims, “as if he was facing a mirror. So, while he’s killing other people, he’s actually destroying himself.”

Last month, the Korean Film Council selected the film as South Korea’s nomination for the Best International Film category at the Academy Awards. With Neon handling North American distribution, MUBI has secured the international distribution title.