Neon Has a Novel Approach to Promoting No Other Choice
Neon has a very specific audience in mind for Park Chan-wook's satirical black comedy No Other Choice.
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Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice is already one of the most talked-about films of the year after winning Best Director at the Sitges Film Festival and the International People’s Choice Award at TIFF. It’s also been selected as South Korea’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the next Academy Awards, but distributor Neon isn’t letting the conversation around the movie slip away ahead of its limited December 25 release stateside.
The dark comedy thriller, which Park also co-wrote, adapts Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax and follows a middle-aged man called Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) who gets desperate after being laid off after 25 years. To support his family and secure new work, Man-su resorts to extreme measures to hobble his competition.
No Other Choice promises to be a razor-sharp social satire from the man who brought us Oldboy and Decision to Leave, which seems to have inspired Neon’s promotional team to set up a very targeted screening.
“This is truly a film that speaks to our gracious executive leaders and the culture they have cultivated,” Neon posted this week, along with an open invitation to all the Fortune 500 CEOs that promised them a private screening of the film that will spotlight “many parts of your humble mission to achieve corporate greatness.”
“From the unbearable weight you carry upholding your employees’ livelihoods, to the systems you strive to conquer for economic growth, to the conditions and resources you govern in times of strategic mergers and realignment – this is truly a film that speaks to you and the culture you have cultivated,” the invite continues.
Social media reactions to the screening invite were largely supportive, with comments like “marketing on point” to “Awesome. None of them will go. But still awesome.”
Though it’s unlikely that any Fortune 500 CEOs will show up, this screening of No Other Choice really would be like holding up a mirror to some of those who are responsible for the human cost of corporate greed, so it would be interesting to see if its themes moved any of them.
Probably not, but we can dream.