Mickey 17 from Parasite director Bong Joon Ho was one of the buzziest early releases of 2025 and soon anyone who missed out on the chance to watch it in theaters will be able to visit the ice planet Nilfheim from home! The sci-fi comedy film is making its way to Max (soon to be HBO Max again) on May 23.
Released theatrically on March 7 in the United States, Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey Barnes. Down on his luck and trapped in a dangerous situation involving a loan shark, Mickey signs up to be an "Expendable" on a crew bound for Nilfheim.
And what is an Expendable? It's a thankless job where the person is assigned dangerous assignments that no one else wants to do, assignments that often result in death, hence the "expendable" part. To utilize these employees to their fullest potential, they are cloned repeatedly, so when one clone dies, they can be reprinted and start all over again.
When we catch up with Mickey in space, he's already died and been brought back to life via cloning technology over 16 times. The movie primarily focuses on Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Mickey 17 is presumed dead, so the scientists progress with making Mickey 18, unaware that 17 is still alive.
Duplicates are strongly frowned upon in this dystopian society, so when Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 come face-to-face, they realize either one of them has to die, or they'll have to find a way to trick everyone into thinking there is only one of them.
Mickey 17 is a very smart film laden with social and political commentary. The comedy is well done and all of the performances are exceptional, particularly from Pattinson and co-star Naomi Ackie, who plays his love interest Nasha.
The film will make its global streaming debut on Friday, May 23, followed by premiering on HBO linear on Saturday, May 24 at 7:40 pm.
Bong wrote and directed the film, which also stars Steven Yeun (Minari), Toni Collette (Hereditary), and Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things). It is based on Edward Ashton's novel Mickey 7 and was produced by Bong, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Dooho Choi.
Bong's next project is an adult animated film called The Valley, but he is also planning to make another horror movie at some point in the future. Previously, during an event, he and John Carpenter discussed plans for Bong's horror film and Carpenter even said he'd like to compose the score.