Mickey 17

Mickey Barnes and his friend Timo are financially destitute after a failed business venture, and on the run from a loan shark. Unable to pay their debts, the pair sign up as crew for a space ship that leaves Earth to colonize the planet Nilfheim — Timo as a pilot and Mickey as an "Expendable". As an Expendable, Mickey is treated as disposable and given lethal assignments, since every time he dies, he is "reprinted" using cloning technology that has been banned on Earth. During the voyage, Mickey develops a romantic relationship with Nasha Barridge, a security agent.

Upon landing on the snow planet Nilfheim, native lifeforms dubbed "creepers" prevent full colonization. Mickey 17, the seventeenth iteration of Mickey, tries to capture a creeper for analysis but falls into a fissure in the ice. Timo sees Mickey 17 being swarmed by creepers before leaving, and reports him dead. However, the creepers collectively push Mickey 17 out of the fissure, enabling him to return to the ship.

Mickey 17 goes to his quarters and finds his replacement, Mickey 18, already there. Multiples are forbidden; Kenneth Marshall, the politician who runs the colony, is only able to use the cloning technology with the proviso that if multiples occur, all clones will be killed immediately. Knowing this, the more aggressive Mickey 18 tries to kill Mickey 17, who resists and suggests an arrangement where both of them live by rotating duties, meals and deaths. Mickey 18 is interrupted and leaves with Nasha, while Mickey 17 is taken away for dinner with Kenneth Marshall, Marshall's wife Ylfa, and security agent Kai. At the dinner, Mickey 17 reacts badly to a meal of experimental meat and subsequent treatment with experimental painkillers.

When Mickey 17 returns to his quarters, Nasha is already aware of the situation and wants to help them. They are seen by Kai, who tries to negotiate with Nasha over sharing the Mickeys. Mickey 18 is enraged when he learns what happened to Mickey 17 at dinner, and leaves with the intent to kill Marshall, with Mickey 17 and Nasha chasing him. Marshall is conducting a public ceremony with a piece of Nilfheim rock, and chaos ensues when creepers erupt from the rock, thwarting Mickey 18's attempt to kill Marshall. One creeper is killed and the other is captured, while Mickey 17, Mickey 18 and Nasha are arrested. Numerous creepers arrive and surround the ship, calling out to the creeper inside.

While in the brig, Mickey 17's description of his experience with the creepers makes Nasha realize they are not hostile. When the trio are brought before Marshall and Ylfa, Nasha tries to defend the Mickeys, but is dismissed. Marshall wants to kill the creepers with a newly-developed nerve gas, but at Ylfa and his assistant Preston's urging, he first allows the Mickeys to go outside and competitively kill the creepers, with the winner being allowed to live. However, when Mickey 17 and 18 are sent out they peacefully seek out the creeper mother, which enrages Marshall and prompts him to go outside himself with a security team to kill the creepers directly.

Mickey 17 uses a translation device to warn the mother about Marshall's plan. The mother threatens to kill all humans unless her surviving child is returned to her, and one human is killed in recompense for her killed child. Mickey 17 communicates this to Nasha via camera, and Nasha attacks Ylfa, enabling her to get the creeper; a handful of security agents also rise against Marshall and Ylfa in protest of their behavior. Nasha returns the creeper to the mother, and Mickey 18 attacks Marshall, killing him in a murder-suicide to fulfill the mother's request.

Six months later, Nasha has risen to a position of power in the colony, and officiates a proper groundbreaking ceremony on Nilfheim. As part of the ceremony, Mickey 17, simply called "Mickey Barnes" by Nasha, detonates the printing device in a symbolic ending of the Expendables program.

A film adaptation of Edward Ashton's novel Mickey7 was announced to be in development prior to its publication in January 2022, with Bong Joon-ho writing, directing, and producing for Warner Bros. Pictures and Robert Pattinson in talks to star.^[7] Charles Yu wrote additional literary material for the film.^[8] Bong was intrigued by the concepts presented in the book, though he made many changes to the characters, including modifying Mickey's personality to be a little more simple minded.^[9] He wrote the screenplay in 2021 based on an early draft of the book, and said that none of the characters portrayed were meant to be mirroring active politicians. Robert Pattinson was the first actor to come to mind for a performance that required dual roles, and he agreed immediately to take the role after being offered it.^[10] Pattinson improvised many lines as Mickey 18, who starts with an aggressive personality, then grows as a person who wants to protect 17.^[11]

Bong storyboarded each sequence before filming.^[12] Pattinson helped to revise part of the script to give it "humor and knowledge of slang that I would have never come across otherwise." Pattinson also partially based his performance on Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, citing similar comedic injuries. Bong maintained that he had final cut privilege, though there was a delay in the editing.^[13] To differentiate the two main Mickeys, Pattinson changed his accent for each character, comparing them to Ren and Stimpy from the show of the same name. In the initial script reading, he imitated the voices of Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O from Jackass. Bong told him not to do the Steve-O impression.^[14]

Pattinson was confirmed to star in May 2022, with Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo joining the cast.^[15] In July, Steven Yeun was added to the cast.^[16] Tim Key was cast after a phone call, as Bong wanted him specifically for a role.^[12] Production began at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden on August 2, 2022,^[17] and concluded in December 2022.^[18] Filming was finished in January 2023, with the director working on the ideal cut after.^[19]

Mickey 17 premiered at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival on February 15, 2025, before opening in South Korea on February 28, 2025, a week before its global rollout.^[6][20]

The film is set to be theatrically released in the United States on March 7, 2025, by Warner Bros. Pictures.^[21] It was originally scheduled to be released on March 29, 2024, but was taken off the schedule due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike.^[22][23] It was rescheduled for January 31, 2025 (where it would have opened three days earlier in South Korea) but was pushed back to April 18, 2025 to take advantage of Easter weekend, and finally to March 7, 2025, swapping the latter date with Sinners.^{[24][25][26][21]}

In South Korea, the film opened on February 28, 2025, and scored the highest post-pandemic debut by Warner Bros., grossing $1.7 million and surpassing the record previously set by Pattinson's 2022 film, The Batman.^[27] It went on to debut to $9 million the opening weekend.^[28]

In the United States and Canada, Mickey 17 is projected to gross $35–45 million from 3,770 theaters in its opening weekend.^[29] The film needs to gross $240–300 million worldwide in order to break-even.^[29][30]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 84% of 133 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Mickey 17 finds Bong Joon Ho returning to his forte of daffy sci-fi with a withering social critique at its core, proving along the way that you can never have too many Robert Pattinsons."^[31] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 40 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[32]

Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph awarded the film with 4 stars out of 5, noting: "As in much of Bong’s work, its chop-and-change attitude to genre keeps his audience on their toes. The film veers from slapstick to absurdism to horror and back again, often within a single shot, such as the regular sight of the latest Pattinson clone flopping out of the meat printer with a sausagey flumph."^[33] Jacob Oller of The A.V. Club called the film "An unwieldy, long-winded, wildly entertaining sci-fi critique of our dehumanizing present."^[34]

A less enthusiastic review came from Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair, who deemed the film as "dissapointing follow-up to Parasite", while stating: "Perhaps if Bong had focused on the clone idea, more intricately exploring the corporate world’s annihilating treatment of workers, he could have arrived at something rattling, even profound. Alas, he is ultimately too enamored of his wiggly animal creations, and by the broadest of jokes about TV camera-obsessed petty tyrants. In all its diminished attention span, Mickey 17 plays less like a new declaration from a great master and more like a feverish TikTok doom scroll leading nowhere."^[35]

Jocelyn Noveck of the Associated Press gave the movie 2 stars out of 4, saying that although having Pattinson's character repeatedly die is an interesting plot-device, and the highlight of the film, that "much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess."^[36]

• Official website  
• Mickey 17 at IMDb