Mickey 17 and the Auteur Comeback: How Bong Joon Ho’s Return Could Rewire Blockbusters, Awards and the Global Box Office
Five years after Parasite upended conventional wisdom about global hits and awards ceilings, Bong Joon Ho returned to studio-scale filmmaking with Mickey 17. Backed by Warner Bros. and Plan B, scored by Jae‑il Jung, and led by Robert Pattinson alongside Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo, the film arrived as a prestige‑minded sci‑fi play with commercial ambitions. Mickey 17 released on February 28, 2025 with a 137‑minute runtime and a reported $118 million budget, and has grossed about $131.8 million worldwide to date. That level of performance, paired with Bong’s brand of genre-with-ideas, makes the film a live test of whether event auteurs can widen today’s franchise-heavy playbook, reshape awards calculus for genre, and ride new cross‑border tailwinds powered by the Korean Wave and smarter localization.