'The Roundup: No Way Out' pre-sold in 158 countries, distributor says

Main poster for ″The Roundup: No Way Out″ [ABO ENTERTAINMENT]

Crime action film “The Roundup: No Way Out” starring Don Lee has been pre-sold in 158 countries, distributor ABO Entertainment announced Tuesday.

“The Roundup: No Way Out” is the third installment of a franchise that started with “The Outlaws” (2017) and continued with “The Roundup” (2022). The franchise follows “monster cop” Ma Suk-do, played by Don Lee – known as Ma Dong-seok in Korea – as he fights bad guys and organized crime.

“The Roundup: No Way Out,” being sold in 158 countries, surpasses the scale of pre-sales of the previous film, “The Roundup,” which was pre-sold in 132 countries in 2022.

Countries to which “The Roundup: No Way Out” was pre-sold include not only Asian countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam but also Britain, Australia, the United States and those in the Middle East.

“’The Roundup: No Way Out’ is expected to show the strength of Korean films globally,” according to the distributor.

“The Roundup” attracted 12.69 million viewers in Korea alone in 2022 as the only domestically-produced film to gain more than 10 million viewers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The Roundup: No Way Out” opens in theaters on May 31.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]