Along With the Gods 3 Targets Filming in Late 2027 With Journey Across Nine Worlds

A New Journey Between Life and Death

South Korea's Along With the Gods film series is preparing a third installment, with director Kim Yong-hwa returning and filming targeted for the second half of 2027. Dexter Studios announced the project on October 20, 2026, bringing back a franchise whose first two films sold a combined 26.68 million tickets in South Korea.

The new film, provisionally titled Along With the Gods: Life and Death, will follow Sol, a protagonist suspended between life and death, across nine worlds in search of a song that was never sung. Its setting is Gucheon, a place where souls remain because attachments they carry after death prevent them from moving into the afterlife.

In its statement on the 20th, Dexter confirmed that it will participate as an investor and handle visual effects, digital color grading, sound design and mixing, with filming targeted for the second half of 2027. Those responsibilities put the studio behind both the appearance and the sound of the new worlds, extending its work on the first two films.

What Is Different About the Third Story?

Gucheon gives the third film a different starting point from the courtroom journeys that introduced the series. Here, the central problem is a soul's inability to leave something behind. Sol's search for an unsung song supplies a personal purpose for the journey through nine worlds.

The first film followed a deceased person facing judgment, while the second explored the long history connecting the guides who escort souls. Life and Death turns toward someone caught between the living world and the afterlife. The announced story keeps the franchise's interest in human feelings while moving its central journey into a new setting.

Dexter has begun planning and development, with the start of filming still a target rather than a completed production milestone. No release date or cast has been announced, including whether the familiar afterlife guides played by Ha Jung-woo, Ju Ji-hoon and Kim Hyang-gi will return.

How the First Two Films Built Their World

Joo Ho-min's webtoon, which ran on Naver from 2010 to 2012, provides the foundation for the films. The series draws on Eastern ideas about death, judgment and rebirth, turning them into a fantasy world where the choices people make during life follow them after death.

Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds, released in 2017, follows a deceased person through trials in seven hells over 49 days. Three afterlife guardians accompany the soul. The trials give the film a structure that is easy to follow: each stage examines the person's conduct while revealing more about the life left behind.

Cha Tae-hyun led that first film, alongside Ha, Ju and Kim as the guardians. Their characters help connect the spectacle of the afterlife to recognisable emotions, including grief, responsibility and family attachment.

The 2018 sequel, Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days, expanded the story through the guardians' past. As they approached a final, 49th trial linked to reincarnation, they encountered a household god who remembered their lives from a thousand years earlier. Ma Dong-suk played a leading role in the sequel, which moved between the living world, the afterlife and the past.

The Dates Behind the Return

The production target places the next major step about a decade after the first film reached cinemas. That long interval helps explain the attention surrounding the announcement, although the date audiences will actually see the third installment depends on the production and release schedule.

• 2010 to 2012: Joo Ho-min's original webtoon ran on Naver.
• 2017: Along With the Gods: The Two Worlds opened in cinemas.
• 2018: Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days followed.
• October 20, 2026: Dexter announced the third film and preparations for production.
• Second half of 2027: The team aims to begin filming Life and Death.

Kim Yong-hwa directed both earlier installments and has selected Life and Death as his next project. His return provides continuity behind the camera even as the announced plot introduces a new protagonist and a different part of the afterlife.

A Franchise With 26.68 Million Admissions

The Two Worlds attracted about 14.41 million moviegoers in South Korea, while The Last 49 Days drew about 12.27 million. Together, they made Along With the Gods the first Korean film franchise whose first two installments each passed 10 million admissions, a major commercial benchmark in the country.

The combined audience of 26.68 million represents tickets sold across the two releases. The sequel sold about 2.14 million fewer tickets than the first film, yet still finished comfortably above the 10 million mark. That gives the third production two successful predecessors rather than a single hit to follow.

Reports on the production announcement put The Last 49 Days' opening-day admissions at 1,246,692, a record opening audience for a Korean film at the time. Its strong opening showed how much interest the first film had created before the sequel arrived.

Reports on the announcement also detailed the franchise's reach outside South Korea. The first and second films held first and second place, respectively, among Korean films at Taiwan's box office. At its release, the sequel set opening records for a Korean film in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Why Kim Yong-hwa's Return Matters

Kim returns to a series that combined large fantasy settings with stories about ordinary human relationships. The third film's search for a song continues that approach: an intimate piece of unfinished life becomes the reason to travel through an extraordinary world.

His more recent commercial record also gives the project a sharper business context. Kim's 2023 space drama The Moon sold about 510,000 tickets against an estimated break even threshold of roughly 6 million. A break even threshold is the level of business a film is estimated to need to recover its costs.

Those figures put The Moon's admissions at roughly 8.5 percent of its estimated target. Life and Death brings Kim back to a franchise with a much larger established audience, although its budget and financial targets have not been disclosed.

How Dexter Plans to Build Nine Worlds

Dexter says visual effects appeared in more than 90 percent of the scenes in each of the first two films. Visual effects, often shortened to VFX, allow filmmakers to create or alter images, including environments that cannot be filmed in a real location. In this series, they were central to making the afterlife visible.

The studio will again take responsibility for the wider work completed after filming. Digital color grading adjusts the colors and brightness of images so that different shots fit together and each setting has a consistent appearance. Sound design creates the sounds of those settings, while mixing balances dialogue, music and effects.

Keeping those jobs together gives Dexter responsibility for how Gucheon's nine worlds look and feel on screen. The challenge extends beyond producing nine different landscapes: Sol's journey must remain understandable as the surroundings change.

The song at the center of the plot also gives the sound work a direct connection to the story. Details of the music have not been announced, but the search for something Sol could never sing places sound within the character's purpose, alongside the visual journey.

The Studio's Ambition Reaches Beyond Korea

Dexter chief executives Kim Wook and Kang Jong-ik described the series as a demonstration of what Korean visual effects technology could achieve when paired with an established creative property. In their joint statement accompanying the announcement, they said:

The 'Along with the Gods' series is a landmark project that demonstrated how widely loved a film can be by combining Korean VFX technology with a high-quality IP,

IP means intellectual property. In this case, it refers to the underlying creative work and franchise, including the story world that began with Joo Ho-min's webtoon. Dexter's investment brings its financial participation together with its role in producing the finished images and sound.

The executives also set out an international ambition for the third installment:

Once again, we will complete stories and visuals that only we can create, presenting a K-movie equipped with both entertainment value and artistic quality capable of becoming a mega-hit in the global market.

The earlier films' performance in Taiwan and their opening records across several markets give that ambition a concrete commercial foundation. For audiences, the next step is the planned return to production in late 2027, this time following an unfinished song through nine worlds.

Key Points

• Along With the Gods: Life and Death aims to begin filming in the second half of 2027.
• Kim Yong-hwa will return after directing the first two films.
• The story follows Sol across nine worlds in Gucheon, seeking a song that was never sung.
• Dexter will invest and handle visual effects, color grading, sound design and mixing.
• The first two films sold about 26.68 million tickets combined in South Korea.
• The cast and cinema release date have not been announced.