After winning big at the 2020 Academy Awards, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is getting an Americanized version on the small screen for a new limited series on HBO. Based on Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film, Joon-ho himself teams with Adam McKay for the new Parasite series, which is expected to last five or six episodes. It’s not clear just how involved Joon-ho will be with the adaptation, though it appears the bulk of its content comes from unused ideas considered for the original film.
“I had all these key ideas accumulated from when I started writing the script,” Bong says of the original Parasite screenplay he co-wrote with Han Jin-won. “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.”
No casting decisions have yet been made, but according to a new report from Collider, Avengers star Mark Ruffalo is being looked at to potentially star as one of the series leads. In response to the report, HBO explained that the project was “in the early stages of development” and casting speculation is “wildly premature.” Still, Collider is sticking with their story, reporting Joon-ho reached out to Ruffalo and that there’s “interest on both sides” in bringing him in. Because this can’t yet be officially confirmed, we’re calling it a rumor at this time.
In any case, Parasite is heading to the small screen, and HBO has got to be even more thrilled about the project at this point. At the Oscars, Joon-ho took home a win for Best Director while Parasite was named as Best Picture. Let’s hope the longer version turns out just as well as the hit movie, but with Joon-ho personally involved, the potential is certainly there. You can watch Joon-ho accept his Best Director Oscar in the video below.
Related Article: Review: ‘Parasite’ on Blu-ray
