ACEMAKER

ACEMAKER movieworks is a Korean film company working across investment, production, distribution, and international sales. Founded in 2018 by former Showbox executive Jung Hyun-joo, the company moved fast by backing films that could play both commercially and critically, giving it a cleaner modern-market identity than many legacy distributors.

Its early profile was built through titles such as The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil and Black Money, but ACEMAKER's significance is bigger than any single release. The company has positioned itself as a high-trust mid-to-upper-tier player for Korean features that need financing discipline, market strategy, and festival-facing packaging at the same time. That combination helped it grow from a new entrant into a recognizable brand at Cannes, Busan, and other sales-heavy markets.

By the mid-2020s, ACEMAKER had also strengthened its international posture by building its own sales capacity while continuing to develop a stable production pipeline. That matters for Korean cinema because the company sits exactly where local creative ambition meets overseas market execution. In the current HITKULTR cycle, it remains relevant through projects such as My First Graduation and the wider film-business conversation around how Korean features are financed, launched, and sold abroad.