NEON is courting America’s corporate elite with a pointed invitation: a free screening of Park Chan-wook’s dark workplace satire “No Other Choice,” reserved for Fortune 500 chief executives. The company circulated the invite on Monday and directed recipients to RSVP via an email address created for the stunt, framing the event as a private show for leaders who helped shape the work culture the film skewers. The screening is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 17, in New York City.
The letter adopts the voice of a gracious host while aiming straight at the jugular. It praises executives for “the culture [they] have cultivated,” then claims the film “speaks” to them and the pressures of “corporate greatness,” from mergers to “realignment.” It closes with a sales pitch that doubles as a punchline: admission costs nothing, “on us,” a line that landed online as both bait and satire.
“No Other Choice,” based on Donald E. Westlake’s novel “The Ax,” follows Man-su, a longtime paper-company employee who loses his job and spirals into a violent plan to eliminate rivals in the hiring pool. Park told Reuters he carried the project for years and wanted it to reflect present-day job anxiety tied to automation and artificial intelligence, arguing that fear of employment and security runs deep.
NEON’s campaign plays off that tension. By inviting CEOs to watch a story about a middle-class worker turning on peers rather than power, the distributor casts corporate leadership as the unseen force behind the desperation on screen. The gambit arrives as NEON readies the film for a Christmas run in U.S. theaters on Dec. 25, and after the Korean Film Council selected it as South Korea’s official submission for the international feature race at the Academy Awards.
