Tag: Bong Joon Ho

  • Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Mickey 17’ to release on March 2024

    By Express News Service

    Warner Bros, on Tuesday, announced the release date of its upcoming film Mickey 17, starring actor Robert Pattinson. The film is directed by Bong Joon Ho and will mark the director’s first release after his award-winning film Parasite. Mickey 17 is set to release in theatres on March 29, 2024.

    The film is currently in production and is directed, produced and scripted by the filmmaker. Mickey 17 is based on the science fiction novel Mickey 7  by Edward Ashton. Starring Robert in the titular role, Mickey 17 also stars Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo.

    The film is produced by Plan B Entertainment, Dooho Choi of Kate Street Picture Company, and Bong Joon Ho under his Offscreen, Inc banner. 

    Mickey 17 is shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji, with production design by Fiona Crombie. Jinmo Yang who has worked in Parasite will be the editor of this film as well. The music is by composer Jae-il Jung, who has also worked in Parasite. Mickey 17 will be released worldwide by Warner Bros Pictures.

    Warner Bros, on Tuesday, announced the release date of its upcoming film Mickey 17, starring actor Robert Pattinson. The film is directed by Bong Joon Ho and will mark the director’s first release after his award-winning film Parasite. Mickey 17 is set to release in theatres on March 29, 2024.

    The film is currently in production and is directed, produced and scripted by the filmmaker. Mickey 17 is based on the science fiction novel Mickey 7  by Edward Ashton. Starring Robert in the titular role, Mickey 17 also stars Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo.

    The film is produced by Plan B Entertainment, Dooho Choi of Kate Street Picture Company, and Bong Joon Ho under his Offscreen, Inc banner. 

    Mickey 17 is shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji, with production design by Fiona Crombie. Jinmo Yang who has worked in Parasite will be the editor of this film as well. The music is by composer Jae-il Jung, who has also worked in Parasite. Mickey 17 will be released worldwide by Warner Bros Pictures.

  • Bong Joon-ho to team up with Robert Pattinson on sci-fi film

    By Express News Service

    Robert Pattinson may work with Parasite director Bong Joon-ho on his next film according to reports. The director is set to work on a sci-fi film that is to be produced by Warner Bros. It is also reported that Bong Joon-ho will write the as yet untitled project.

    Further, it is also speculated that the film will be based on an upcoming novel by Edward Ashton titled Mickey7. It is being hyped as Andy Wier’s The Martian meets Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter as it is about a man on an expedition to colonise Niflheim, which is an ice world.

    The book is expected to be published in the first quarter of the year by St. Martin, an imprint of Macmillan. Bong will produce via Offscreen with Dooho Choi for Kate Street Picture Company and Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner for Plan B, which produced his Netflix film, Okja. Peter Dodd will oversee the studio.

    Meanwhile, Pattinson will next be seen in DC’s The Batman, also produced by Warner Bros and directed by Matt Reeves. He will play the titular role in the film that is scheduled to be out on March 4. 

  • Bong Joon-ho to direct his next film for Warner Bros, Robert Pattinson in talks to star 

    By PTI

    LOS ANGELES: Nearly two years after the record-breaking success of “Parasite”, Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho seems to have found his next film which is expected to feature “The Batman” star Robert Pattinson.

    Sources told Deadline that Bong will write and direct an untitled film based on Edward Ashton’s upcoming novel “Mickey7” for studio Warner Bros.

    The director will also back the project via his production banner Offscreen alongside Dooho Choi for Kate Street Picture Company and Plan B.

    The novel, to be published in 2022 by Macmillan’s imprint St Martin, follows Mickey7, who is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonise the ice world Niflheim.

    “Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous — even suicidal — the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it,” reads the synopsis of the book.

    While the film will be inspired by the novel, sources said that given Bong’s style of working with adaptations, his version might be different from the source material.

    His 2013 post-apocalyptic sci-fi film “Snowpiercer” was based on the French graphic climate fiction novel “Le Transperceneige” by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette.

    According to Deadline, author Ashton presented the manuscript for the unpublished book to Bong towards the end of 2021.

    The acclaimed filmmaker grew interested in the story and became loosely attached to the project late last year.

    It is said Bong met some of the most promising Hollywood stars before he zeroed in on Pattinson after meeting him.

    “Parasite” swept the 2019 Oscars, including the best picture and best director wins, a first for a Korean-language film.

    Following an HBO limited series based on the film in the works with Bong executive producing alongside Adam McKay, this film will be the South Korean filmmaker’s second collaboration with WarnerMedia.

    Pattinson’s next “The Batman” is a Warner Bros film, which is slated to be released on March 4.

    Peter Dodd is overseeing for the studio.

  • Sharon Choi, Bong Joon-ho’s interpreter for 2020 awards run, has ‘revised’ subtitles of Squid Game’ 

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: Sharon Choi, the star-interpreter for South Korean director Bong Joon-ho during the dream award season of “Parasite” last year, on Thursday, October 14, 2021, said she has “revised some of the subtitles” of Netflix’s superhit Korean language series “Squid Game”.

    The development comes days after some viewers on social media criticised the nine-part survival drama for its alleged wrong interpretation of dialogues from Korean to English.

    Choi, who goes by her Korean name Sha-sung Choi on Instagram, now shares the subtitles credits with original subtitles writer Eun-sook Yoon.

    “I revised some of the subtitles for Squid Game. The actual subtitles (not CC) were not perfect but not as horrendous as some people said,” Choi, a budding filmmaker, wrote on her Instagram Story.

    Making a case for subtitle writers, she further appealed to the audience to consider an important factor like “readability” or the character count visible onscreen that must keep pace with the moving images.

    “Please remember subtitles are never perfect because readability aka character count is also a huge factor,” she further wrote alongside a picture of the subtitles translation credits of the show’s first episode updated to “Eun-sook Yoon, Sharon Choi”.

    Last year, Choi had garnered a lot of praise and attention for her quick and to-the-point translations for Bong, the Oscar-winning “Parasite” director, since the genre-defying film started travelling to international film festivals and award ceremonies.

    Netflix on Wednesday announced that “Squid Game”, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, has become its “biggest series launch” till date after the series hit the mark of 111 million views in less than a month since its debut on September 17, 2021.

    The show follows 456 people struggling with debt in Seoul who sign on to play a series of deadly competitions based on Korean children’s games, the winner of which will receive 45.6 billion won (USD 38 million).

    It stars Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-jun, Jung Ho-yeon, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung.

  • Bong Joon-ho to helm Korean animation set in the deep sea

    By Express News Service
    Following his Oscar-award winning Parasite, Bong Joon-ho will be directing a Korean animation film for the production company 4th Creative Party, which has worked on visual effects for The Host, Snowpiercer, Okja, Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden.

    It was previously said that he was working on both a Korean-language project with a blend of horror and action and an English film based on an undisclosed event that happened in 2016.

    Several reports state that the fully CGI animated feature will be a deep-sea adventure, featuring water creatures and humans.   The story will reportedly follow an invertebrate deep-sea fish who believes he’s suffering from spinal disk herniation. According to reports, the director has already finalised the voice cast but hasn’t disclosed any names. 

  • Bong Joon Ho’s HBO ‘Parasite’ series an original story set in film’s universe

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: Filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” series at HBO will be an original story set in the Oscar-winning film’s universe and not a remake.

    Bong had teamed up with producer-writer Adam McKay and HBO for a TV adaptation of the film just before its historic triumph at the Academy Awards where it became the first South Korean film to win the Best Picture Oscar, reported Collider.

    McKay, who is best known for HBO’s Emmy-winning show “Succession,” recently appeared on MTV’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast to confirm that the work on the series was in full speed.

    “We’re just having the best time. We’ve just staffed up with an incredible writers’ room. I basically outlined the series with director Bong during the quarantine, with him overseeing,” McKay said.

    The producer said that the HBO series will not be a remake of Bong’s dark thriller on the class-divide in South Korea.

    “It’s an original series. It’s in the same universe as the feature, but it’s an original story that lives in that same world.” McKay said he was honoured to be anywhere near the orbit of the director, known for international classics like “Memories of Murder”, “Mother” and “Okja” to name a few.

    “Occasionally in life, you get very lucky, and for me to get to work anywhere near director Bong’s orbit ” usually, when I hear people say ‘I’m honored,’ it sounds like bull**** to me, but I’m legitimately honored.

    And having a blast.”

  • Bong Joon Ho was very encouraging, says ‘Minari’ director Lee Isaac Chung

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: “Minari” director Lee Isaac Chung says getting praised by somebody with as strong an eye for detail as Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon Ho was a “real treat”.

    Lee spoke to the “Parasite” filmmaker over a phone call and though he was initially nervous, he was elated when he found out that Bong liked his film.

    “I feel like he was very happy for us and he’s very encouraging. I’m so glad he likes the movie. That’s a real treat for me. He has a very strong eye for detail. I was nervous talking to him but I was so glad that he picked up on a lot of details that excited me about the film,” the filmmaker told PTI during a virtual roundtable with international journalists.

    Lee, 42, didn’t watch “Parasite” while he was editing “Minari” as he was afraid that it would end up influencing him.

    He waited until he was done editing his movie to finally watch the movie.

    “And I was blown away by what he (Bong) did (in the movie). I told him, as we were on that call together, that he made the perfect movie.”

    While “Parasite” was a dark satire on the rich-poor divide in South Korea, Lee’s semi-autobiographical drama comes from a more personal space.

    ALSO READ | Loved Oscar winner Parasite? Here are five more Bong Joon-ho movies to binge-watch during COVID-19 lockdown

    It revolves around Jacob (Steven Yeun), a youn Korean-American father who along with his wife and two children moves from California to a farm in rural Arkansas in search of their American dream in 1980s.

    Predominantly in Korean language and slated to be released in Indian theatres by PVR Pictures on April 16, the film has emerged as one of the front-runners in this year’s Hollywood award season.

    “Minari” is vying for six Oscars at the 93rd Academy Awards, including best picture, best director, best actor (Yeun), and the best supporting actress (Youn Yuh-jung).

    It has already won the best foreign-language Golden Globe and the best-supporting actress BAFTA for Youn.

    Lee is surprised by the extraordinary journey the project, which was a low budget film and a “stressful shoot” for him, has had.

    “I had no idea any of this would happen. It’s been a wild ride and I have been touched by audiences who are connecting with this film,” he said.

    There was a strong echo of the past as Lee began filming “Minari.

    The director remembers that when they moved to Arkansas in the 80s, it was the time of a great farm crisis in America, and while he was prepping for the film, he read news stories that there was a possibility that it was happening again.

    “So I felt like there’s something happening in which there’s a cycle that’s happening for me on a personal level and then perhaps in our country in which farming, and also immigration was becoming quite an issue, and it continues to be an issue now,” he said.

    Lee also believes that the ’80s era somehow captures something of the present.

    “We couldn’t have imagined that the pandemic would raise another echo of what’s happening in the story, which is a family having to come together due to suffering and due to catastrophe in a way,” the director said, explaining that the story emerged from a personal space but somehow found “more echoes” along the way.

    “That has been the nature of this project.

    Somehow, we’re submitting to something in the creative process of finding new things as we go, I guess,” he added.

    While writing Jacob’s character, Lee thought a lot about the cinema of American screen icon James Dean as he felt he wanted someone like that for the role.

    “An important theme that I thought about while I was writing Jacob was a scene from ‘East of Eden’ where James Dean discovers that his crops are growing, and then he runs around in the field and rolls in the dirt.

    He does something similar in ‘Giant’ when he discovers oil, there’s this massive celebration.

    “I remember feeling like this is the sort of Jacob that I want, and especially for the scene where he discovers water and the scenes when he gets the tractor and when farming seems to be going his way.

    I didn’t have any specific actor.

    But lo and behold, I feel like I found James Dean in Steven.

    ” The director said he was surprised when Yeun, a major Hollywood Korean-American star with credits such as “The Walking Dead” and “Burning”, also brought up Dean during their discussion.

    “I remember really being floored when he brought it up because that was in my mind as I was writing.

    So it was great that we got to come together on this and to create these characters together,” Lee said.

    The film also features Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho and Will Patton.