Oldboy 20th-Anniversary Trailer Confirms Re-Release of Park Chan-wook Classic

05/11/2023 06:28 pm EDT

Oldboy is headed back to theaters for its 20th Anniversary, and a new trailer for the re-release makes it official. Park Chan-wook's Oldboy will be re-released in theaters with a "restored and remastered" version on August 16th. You can check out the trailer for it below! 

Here's the synopsis for Park Chan-wook's Oldboy: 

Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik), an obnoxious drunk abducted on a rainy night in 1988, wakes up in a strange, windowless hotel room. Kept under lock and key for an unknown reason, Oh Dae-Su's invisible captors keep him fed and systematically sedated to avert suicide, providing only a colour television to keep him company. And after fifteen long years in captivity, perplexed Oh Dae-Su finds himself released. Now, his pitiless abductors encourage Oh Dae-Su to track down the ones behind the mysterious kidnapping and finally get his brutal, longed-for revenge on the unknown tormentor. However, who would hate Oh Dae-Su so much that he would deny him a quick and clean death?

Oldboy was a milestone film when it was released in 2003 (based on the manga Old Boy), which helped Korean cinema truly jump shores and gain an international following. It was a success that paved the way to Squid Game and other Korean TV series and films to become big hits for Netflix and other streaming services in the 2020s. 

The popularity of Oldboy has proven to be both enduring (20 years strong) and unique to Park Chan-wook's vision. FilmDistrict tried to put out an Oldboy remake ten years after the original (2013), starring future Marvel stars Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen. The remake was done by the able hands of Spike Lee, but it didn't matter: Oldboy (2013) crashed and burned with both critics and American audiences, carrying the grand dishonor of having one of the lowest openings of all time, as well as one of the lowest box office runs of modern times, earning just $5.2 million worldwide in its entire theatrical run. 

Meanwhile, the original Oldboy still holds up as a major cult film favorite. Choi Min-sik's performance as Oh Dae-su included revolutionary highlights for the time of the 2000s, including the actor eating a live octopus on camera, or doing brutal action/stunt choreography in a one-take hallway fight sequence that would go on to become a staple of the action genre (see: Netflix's Daredevil, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy 3, etc.).

Oldboy will be re-released in theaters on August 

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