IU Marks 18 Years in Music With Back-to-Back Concert Film Re-Releases at CGV

Two of IU's biggest concert films are heading back to the big screen, and the timing could not feel more meaningful. Distributor CGV ICECON announced on the 3rd that it will re-release IU Concert: The Golden Hour (2022) and IU Concert: The Winning (2024) on the 9th and the 16th respectively, with each film getting its own standalone theatrical run in honor of IU's 18th debut anniversary.

The two films, explained

The Golden Hour was IU's first-ever concert film, capturing her September 2022 performances at the Olympic Main Stadium over two nights. It was a landmark moment for her career: a solo artist filling one of Korea's largest venues and committing the whole thing to screen for the first time. The film gave fans who missed the live run a chance to experience what those nights felt like, and it clearly left an impression worth revisiting.

The Winning documents an even bigger chapter. Filmed across two nights in late September 2024, it captured IU's first-ever world tour and her 100th concert milestone in the same breath. That detail alone made the original theatrical release a major event for longtime fans. For the re-release, CGV ICECON is going further than standard 2D, adding ScreenX and 4DX screenings so audiences can take in the scale of that tour in formats built for spectacle.

A different kind of celebration

The anniversary re-releases carry a little extra weight given what IU has been through recently. A Goyang concert scheduled for this month was cancelled after she was diagnosed with patulous Eustachian tube dysfunction, a condition where the tube connecting the middle ear to the back of the throat stays abnormally open, disrupting hearing and making performing extremely difficult. Her sixth studio album has also been pushed back as she recovers.

With live shows off the table for now, these theatrical screenings offer fans something close to the next best thing: IU on a cinema screen, at full volume, in the formats her team originally designed the releases to be seen in. For anyone who followed either tour closely, catching both films in the same month feels like a proper way to mark 18 years.