Bong Joon-ho hopes HBO’s Parasite TV show will be “something of great genius”

HBO is adapting Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning movie Parasite as an English-language TV show, and the director has very high hopes for it.

Last year, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite made history by becoming the first foreign language film to the win Academy Award for Best Picture. Anyone who saw it probably won’t be surprised. The movie, about a poor family who insinuate themselves into the lives of a wealthy family in South Korea, is really, really good.

Now, The Big Short director Adam McKay is adapting the movie as a TV show for HBO, with Bong Joon-ho on board to consult. “Parasite is a film on wealthy and poor families, and that is a problem everywhere,” the director said at the Cannes Film Festival. “[The television series] will be something of great genius, I hope. I worked with Adam McKay and he’s figuring out the scenario. We’re going to do it in the United States.”

"The subject continues to have resonance in France and elsewhere. Many of [us] would like to be rich, but I think in all of us there is a fear of becoming poor. I’m involved in the HBO adaptation. It will be a black comedy. I’m working in close cooperation with screenwriter McKay. This time I’m giving my input as a producer."

I’ll definitely be curious to see what Bong Joon-ho and McKay come up with. On the one hand, seeing as the movie is already great and was popular enough here to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, I wonder if an English-language remake is necessary. On the other hand, Bong has such a great track record (The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja are all fantastic) that I’m pretty happy to watch whatever he’s involved with.

According to The A.V. Club, Bond’s next movie will be an English-language live-action film, after which he’ll be working on a CGI animated feature about a conflict between human beings and sea creatures. Give me all of it!

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