Director Park Hoon-jung’s ‘The Witch Part 2’ attracted 2.8 million viewers in theaters in 2022. ‘The Other One’ (hereinafter referred to as ‘The Witch 2’) will be released on Netflix on the 20th.
At the time of its release, ‘The Witch 2’ was a work that maintained a high rank in the box office even among strong competitors such as ‘Crime City 2’ and ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and exceeded the break-even point.
The movie continues the story right after the disappearance of Gu Ja-yoon, the main character of the previous work. An unidentified group indiscriminately attacks the secret laboratory ‘Ark’, and the ‘girl’ (Cynthia), who survives there alone, steps out into the world for the first time in her life.
With the help of Kyung-hee (Park Eun-bin), whom she met by chance, she begins a new daily life at the farm, but as forces pursuing the girl’s whereabouts gather one by one, her dormant nature begins to awaken. Afterwards, the story expands as forces with different purposes collide.
Director Park Hoon-jung, who has continued the genre film lineage with ‘New World’, ‘Night in Paradise’, and ‘The Witch’, was in charge of directing. As with the previous work, the core production team remains the same. Director Park Hoon-jung’s director of photography Kim Young-ho, who has been working with him since his debut film ‘Blood Struggle’, art director Hwa-seong Cho, who worked on ‘Veteran’ and ‘Inside Men’, music director Mog who worked on ‘Secret Agent’ and ‘Crime City’, and martial arts director Kim Jeong-min, who was well-received for his unconventional action in the first ‘Witch’, have come together again.
It is also an eye-catching composition in terms of cast. Cynthia, who plays the main character girl, made her screen debut in this film. Park Eun-bin played the role of Kyung-hee, the girl’s guardian, while Seo Eun-soo, Jin-gu, Seong Yu-bin, and Jo Min-soo each played important roles. Lee Jong-seok also appears in a special appearance, and Kim Da-mi, the protagonist of the previous work, also appears briefly as Goo Ja-yoon. Even those who criticized it said that the actors’ acting was excellent.
In particular, Cynthia was an unknown actress with no acting experience at the time, and this film was effectively her debut film. He was selected for the role of the main character ‘girl’ after five auditions, overcoming a competition rate of 1408:1.
The process leading up to production was not smooth. Director Park Hoon-jung submitted a story about Goo Ja-yoon going abroad to distributor Warner Bros. immediately after the first film was a hit, but it was rejected due to the huge overseas location costs. Afterwards, Warner Bros. announced its withdrawal of investment in Korean films, putting the production itself in danger of being canceled. In the end, the distributor was changed to NEW and the direction was changed to domestic filming, and crank-in was only possible in December 2020.
The box office performance is at a respectable level as of 2022. It surpassed 1 million viewers on the 4th day of release, 2 million on the 11th day, and 2.5 million on the 18th day. The final cumulative number of viewers was approximately 2.8 million, exceeding the break-even point.
Meanwhile, director Park Hoon-jung is continuing to expand the ‘Witch Universe’ by introducing ‘Tyrant’, a series that shares the ‘Witch’ worldview, through Disney+ in 2024. The running time is 137 minutes and is suitable for ages 15 and older. It is known that ‘Witch Universe’ has three episodes planned.
