It was recently announced that director Bong Joon Ho will be teaming up with Adam McKay (The Big Short, Vice) to adapt Bong’s critically acclaimed, bloody awesome, Best Picture Oscar-nominated film, Parasite into a new series for HBO. Now, this sounds kinda cool except nobody really knows what it means. Is it going to be an American adaptation in the English language? Is Bong Joon Ho actually going to be heavily involved or will he just be a producer? All questions that make me anxious because if the series is going to be exactly the same as the movie just told in a different language, then I implore all the white people of the world to stop being babies and just watch the original film with subtitles.
That said, whatever Bong Joon Ho told The Wrap recently does pique my interest.
I had all these key ideas accumulated from when I started writing the script. I just couldn’t include all those ideas in the two-hour running time of the film, so they’re all stored in my iPad and my goal with this limited series is to create a six-hour-long film.
A six-hour-long film? Take that The Irishman! Don’t get scared, though. It’s not literally going to be one movie that’s six-hours long. It’s going to be a limited series, as Bong said, that will feel like one six-hour-long movie.
Bong also provided an example of questions of his film that were left unanswered because of the short runtime.
When the original housekeeper Mun Gwang (Lee Jung Eun) comes back in the late-night, something happened to her face. Even her husband asked about it but she never answered. I know why she had the bruises on her face. I have a story for that and aside from that why does she know the existence of this bunker? What relationship does she have with that architect to know of this bunker? So I have all these hidden stories that I have stored.
Now, while all of this does sound mighty fascinating, I’m still a little confused about the series’ approach? Is this Parasite series going to be an American adaptation that’s longer and more detailed? Is Bong literally making an extended version of his film with the same actors? Time will tell.
