Korea’s A-List Star Faces 4 Box Office Flops—Now He’s Fighting Back

Ha Jung-woo, once an unstoppable box office force with hits like The Chaser, Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time, and the Along with the Gods series, has recently faced an unexpected career slump. His last four films—Unofficial Operation (2023), Road to Boston (2023), Hijacking (2024), and Nocturnal (2025)—all struggled at the box office, marking a significant downturn in his otherwise stellar career.

His 2023 action-thriller Unofficial Operation, based on a real-life hostage rescue in Lebanon, barely crossed the 1 million ticket mark despite high expectations. Following that, the historical sports drama Road to Boston, which depicted Korea’s first participation in the 1947 Boston Marathon, also failed to gain momentum, attracting just over 1 million viewers.

His 2024 hostage thriller Hijacking, despite an intense, true-story premise, underperformed in theaters but managed to recoup its losses through overseas distribution and VOD sales. Meanwhile, his latest release Broken, which required 1.1 million viewers to break even, has struggled to attract even 200,000 moviegoers, officially making it a commercial failure.

This losing streak is unprecedented for Ha Jung-woo, whose films have collectively sold over 100 million tickets—a milestone few actors in Korea have reached.

Despite the slump, Ha Jung-woo isn’t backing down. Instead, he’s doubling down with two new films, this time stepping behind the camera as well.

On April 2, Ha Jung-woo will return as a director with Lobby, a film centered around a tech entrepreneur who is forced to enter the world of high-stakes corporate lobbying and political maneuvering. The film, starring Ha himself alongside Park Byung-eun, Kim Eui-sung, Kwak Sun-young, Lee Dong-hwi, and Park Hae-soo, blends dark comedy with social satire, offering a fresh take on power and corruption in the business world.

Shortly after wrapping up Lobby, Ha Jung-woo completed filming another directorial project, The Neighbors Upstairs, a dark comedy about two feuding families entangled in a web of secrets and tension over noise complaints.

The film features an all-star cast, with Ha Jung-woo and Gong Hyo-jin as the upstairs couple, and Honey Lee and Kim Dong-wook as the downstairs neighbors. The story, adapted from a Spanish film, has been reworked with added Korean humor and cultural nuances to enhance its appeal.

Ha Jung-woo first tried his hand at directing in 2013 with Rollercoaster, a low-budget aviation comedy that earned 270,000 viewers on a ₩5.9 billion budget—a modest success. His 2015 directorial follow-up Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, an adaptation of a popular novel, unfortunately, underperformed at 950,000 tickets sold.

Since then, he has focused on acting but has continued developing ideas behind the scenes. With Lobby and The Neighbors Upstairs, Ha Jung-woo is making a serious push to re-establish himself not only as a box office draw but also as a visionary filmmaker.

Despite recent setbacks, Ha Jung-woo’s determination to evolve—taking on both acting and directing—suggests that he’s playing the long game. His track record of delivering gripping performances and his knack for selecting compelling stories make his upcoming projects highly anticipated.

Will his directorial comeback be the key to reigniting his box office dominance? All eyes are on April 2, when Lobby hits theaters, marking the next chapter in Ha Jung-woo’s career.