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Bong Joon Ho and Robert Pattinson kicked off the long-awaited launch of Mickey 17 with the first official press event for the movie in the Korean capital of Seoul on Monday.

Korean director Bong’s first feature since his 2019 Cannes Palme d’Or and quadruple Oscar winner Parasite, the sci-fi drama has been a long time coming, with the shoot having wrapped in December 2022.

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Having been originally scheduled for a March 29, 2024 release, the film will now world premiere at the Berlinale in February, ahead of releasing theatrically in Korea on February 28, followed by March 7 in the U.S. by Warner Bros.

“It’s exciting to have the honor of premiering Mickey 17 in Korea before it hits cinemas worldwide in March,” Bong told the press conference at Seoul’s Yongsan CGV cinema.

It marked a first visit to Korea for Pattinson who was greeted by hundreds of fans as he touched down at Seoul’s Incheon Airport.

“I’m just so happy people are excited about the movie. It has been a long road to come to this release and to see people excited and with the poster already and wanting it signed. It’s exciting,” he said.

The Twilight, The Batman and Tenet star said he was puzzled as to why he had never made it to Korea before.

“I don’t understand how I’ve never come to Seoul with promotional tours with other movies. I’ve always wanted to come. I know a lot of fun people who live here, and I wanted to meet up with these guys again,” he said referring to Bong and his producing team.

Adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 sci-fi novel of ‘Mickey 7’, Mickey 17 revolves around a directionless man living in a near future who signs up for a job as an “expendable”, or disposable employee sent on dangerous missions who is automatically regenerated if he perishes on the job.

“The script seems deceptively simple at first,” said Pattinson. “But then when you try to break down Mickey’s mentality, this guy who has zero self-confidence but somehow doesn’t feel sorry for himself, it gets complicated really quickly. I ended up thinking of him as this poorly trained dog who needs to die 17 times to finally learn something.”

Bong said the film was more than “just” a sci-fi movie.

“It’s about humanity. The story of Mickey revolves around an ordinary powerless and vulnerable young man,” he explained.

“Unlike the original novel where Mickey is portrayed as a history teacher and the story is filled with technical explanations about science, I chose to strip away these details and focus purely on the human aspects, to present Mickey as member of the working class, a lonely figure with an extreme job.”

Recounting his experiences shooting the film, Pattinson recounted how the set had the feel of “giant Star Wars” production and revealed that he and the rest of the cast – which features Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo – had been intrigued by Bong’s directing style in which he got his actors to deliver one or two lines at a time.

“I think all the actors had the same experience in that we’d turn up, and then ask, ‘What’s happening? We shoot one line and then move on?’. After one week, everyone is like, ‘This is the best, we want to do every movie like this’… also you [Bong] are so open with showing the edit on set. It’s fascinating to see that you have the entire movie in your head before we have already started shooting it.”

Bong suggested their bemusement was due to the different way Korean filmmakers shoot and edit their films.

“In Korea, we typically edit directly on set which is not very common in the U.S. so foreign actors often find it fascinating to see editing done in real-time,” he said.

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