‘Parasite’ Isn’t Director Bong Joon-ho’s First Film to Receive A TV Spinoff
Celebrated writer-director-producer Bong Joon-ho has received a lot of attention for his Oscar-winning film, Parasite. And there’s more where that came from, as the movie will soon be made into a miniseries. However, this isn’t the first time one of his films has gotten this treatment.
‘Parasite’ won Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards
What Parasite pulled off this year is remarkable. After premiering in May 2019 in South Korea, and the U.S. and other countries in subsequent months, the film was one of the most-talked-about in the months leading up to the 2020 Academy Awards. But few could have predicted just how well it would do there.
At the major award show, Parasite was up for six Oscars. It took home four of those. Not only that, but the categories in which is won are some of the biggest. They are Best International Feature Film, Best Director for Joon-ho, Best Original Screenplay for Joon-ho and Han Jin-won, and Best Picture.
Before that, it was picked up for miniseries adaptation
Even before it dominated at the Academy Awards, Joon-ho had more to talk about on the subject of Parasite. In Jan. 2020, it was reported that he was working with HBO and filmmaker Adam McKay (The Big Short) on a limited series of the same name.
According to Joon-ho, Parasite the series is essentially “an expanded film that can delve deeper into the stories” of the original. He said that he “had so many more ideas” he wanted to explore in the movie, and this will allow him to do so.
Bong Joon-ho made these other films
Though Parasite is the film that has made Joon-ho a household name, the filmmaker has been well-known to those in the industry for years now. He began writing in the ’90s. He then made his way into directing in the early ’00s with South Korean films such as Barking Dogs Never Bite.
It was Joon-ho’s 2006 monster film The Host that brought him success in other markets after its premiere at Cannes Film Festival. He followed this up with Mother and his first English-language film, Snowpiercer. Then came 2017’s Okja, which is on Netflix.
What is ‘Snowpiercer’?
Speaking with Tom Quinn of Neon (the production company that distributed the film in North America), the producer said, “I always joked that [with] Snowpiercer, you already made your Marvel movie, right? Isn’t that [Captain America: The] Winter Soldier part two?”
Snowpiercer was a 2013 action film Joon-ho wrote and directed. It stars Chris Evans as a working-class citizen aboard the titular train, which contains the only remaining humans after a new ice age wiped out the rest of civilization. The movie was critically acclaimed, despite some controversy involving a pre-ousted Harvey Weinstein.
‘Snowpiercer’ also became a series
Like Parasite before it, Snowpiercer was so widely praised that it received a spinoff series. Though it’s actually considered more a reboot. At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019, audiences got their first sneak peek at the show. Joon-ho is credited as an executive producer.
Despite the excitement, there has been a lot of back and forth involved in this adaptation, which stars Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connelly. As of publication, Snowpiercer is set to premiere on TNT in the U.S. in May 2020, and on Netflix globally. A second season has already been filmed. Let’s hope Parasite gets a quicker release.
