Seoul goes underwater in Netflix's The Great Flood

SEOUL - Netflix has been steadily muscling its way into the Korean film business, using its deep pockets to bankroll productions that skip theatres altogether.

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As multiplexes continue to haemorrhage audiences - ticket sales for domestic films remain at roughly 60 per cent of 2024's figures - the streaming giant is only doubling down.

Its slate of Korean-language originals in 2025 has spanned supernatural thrillers (Revelations) to frothy high-school romance (Love Untangled). That eclectic spread now culminates in The Great Flood, a full-throttle apocalyptic spectacle packed with mega-tsunamis, crumbling high rises and the sort of disaster imag ery that would have filled multiplexes in another era.

"It's a genre film," said director Kim Byung-woo, 45, at the Dec 16 press conference at CGV Yongsan in Seoul. "Disaster and science fiction, woven together. Both genres have their own pleasures, and I hope viewers get the full range."

He added that he hoped viewers will remember the film as "something wondrous and lovely".

Kim, as it happens, is no stranger to high-concept mayhem. His first major feature, The Terror Live (2013), turned a live broadcast into a ticking bomb; Take Point (2018) trapped mercenaries in a bunker amid a brewing world war.

His latest, the fantasy epic Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy, arrived earlier in 2025 on a wave of hype only to bomb big time, undone by half-baked world-building and maudlin melodrama.