That Parasite, so hot right now. After becoming the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars this past weekend, Bong Joon Ho’s masterful, dark dramedy is getting the series treatment courtesy of HBO.

It was previously reported that Bong would be teaming up with Vice and The Big Short director Adam McKay for the limited series, which will be a 6-hour expanded movie. It’s still very early in the process (a script isn’t even finished yet) but according to Collider, the team behind the series already knows who it wants for one of the series’ leads: Marvel star Mark Ruffalo. Also according to Collider, Bong and Ruffalo have spoken to one another and there is mutual interest on both sides.

However, HBO is being extremely tight-lipped, understandably, and the above should be taken in context with HBO’s official statement regarding the report: “The HBO limited series inspired by Parasite is in the early stages of development, and to speculate on any characters or casting is wildly premature.”

Regardless of who is cast, it should be a fun series and a fascinating look at all the extra ideas in Bong’s mind that didn’t fit inside a theatrical run time. Speaking to The Wrap in January, he explained why he felt the need to turn a 2-hour film into a 6-hour film: “I had all these key ideas accumulated from when I started writing the script,” he said. “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.”

Some of those ideas are extremely detailed, too, revealed the Oscar-winning director:

“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.”

It’s true that Parasite had a lot of jumping-off points that could make for fine stories in their own rights, with or without the Kim or Park families and it will be interesting to see what the pacing is for a series that is essentially a 6-hour-long movie.. Apparently, Bong Joon Ho read about Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming 4-hour cut of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Martin Scorsese’s 3 1/2-hour The Irishman, decided they were soft like Charmin, and told everyone to get outta the way and hold his damn beer.

So many questions! Will it include any of the original cast? Will it be all new? Will it be set in Korea? Will it be subtitled? Who knows! But it sure will be fun to find out.

  • News
  • VIDEOS