How long have we been waiting to get a good look at Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to the acclaimed Parasite, the sci-fi feature Mickey 17? Too long, that’s for sure. While we may not get to see the first official trailer yet, the cinema owners at CinemaCon have. Bong introduced the trailer for this upcoming pic starring Robert Pattinson, which promises to explore themes of human printing, identity, and space colonisation, at the industry event this week. The South Korean filmmaker stated that this is the story of “a simple man who ultimately ends up saving the world.”

Mickey 17 also stars Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo, with Bong penning the script based on the book Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton’s novel centres on a man known as an Expendable, on a mission to colonize a distant planet. Each colony features one such Expendable who takes on the most dangerous jobs on the mission – jobs that will assuredly lead to their deaths. However, their memories are backed up and they are restored to cloned bodies when they die. In the novel, Mickey 7 – the 7th version of this crewmember – is left for dead on a mission, but survives. When he returns to base, he discovers that Mickey 8, a clone of himself, has already been created – which is a problem because the idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they would likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.

In the case of the film adaptation, though, Bong has changed a key thing: “The number is the number of times he dies. I killed him ten times more,” the director joked. “It’s a sci-fi movie, but it’s a human story.” Pattinson essentially plays two characters, then: Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Pattinson previously explained that Mickey 17, on one hand, is beaten down by life but is happy to be part of a team, while 18 is more like “playing an evil brother” who is “out of control.”

Journalists in attendance have reported that the trailer was set to the song “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head” by Frank Sinatra and included some violent scenes, including one of Mickey losing a hand and being dumped alive in liquid metal. The trailer was described by IndieWire as “a tongue-in-cheek, screwball dystopia of sorts”.

Fingers crossed that the trailer is made available online very soon! In the meantime, you can check out a previously-released teaser here.

Mickey 17 releases in cinemas from January 31st, 2025.