Bong Joon Ho Finished Writing One Of Two Parasite Followup Projects

For awhile it seemed like Bong was heading into a long hiatus following his record-breaking “Parasite” campaign, which started in May 2019 at the Cannes Film Festival and ended in February 2020 at the Academy Awards. In a March 2019 conversation published on The Atlantic, Bong admitted to fellow director Kelly Reichardt that he was having a hard time overcoming the exhaustion of Oscar season and getting back to working on his new scripts.

“Now that I finally have time, I’m trying to get back on it, but I’m so exhausted, mentally and physically,” Bong said at the time. “I’m just a shell of a human.” Bong told press backstage at the 2020 Oscars following his Best Picture win that he had started writing two projects before heading to Cannes with “Parasite.” The director added, “I’m continuing to work on them, nothing has changed because of these awards. One is in Korean and one is in English.” The specifics of these projects have yet to be revealed, although Bong told Variety last year that each script is comparable to the scope of “Parasite” and his 2009 film “Mother.” “The Korean film is located in Seoul and has unique elements of horror and action,” Bong said. “It’s difficult to define the genre of my films. The English project is a drama film based on a true event that happened in 2016. Of course I won’t know until I finish the script, but it has to be set half in the U.K. and half in the U.S.” Is Bong’s newly finished script for the Korean-language project or the English-language project? The filmmaker wouldn’t say.