Bong Joon-ho has been on movies for close to thirty (count ’em) years now. His feature film resumè began several years after, with black comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite in 2000. Indeed, not all of his films have been commercial hits. Still, this is neither to say nor imply his directorial work hasn’t stricken a chord with critics.
Snowpiercer helmer Bong Joon-Ho continued his reign this year with Okja, a milestone sci-fi rescue adventure that became recipient to critical praise, as well as condemnation by critics of its distrubutors at Netflix. Early on after screening at Cannes, the film was banned for a time by South Korea theaters, signaling the growing rift between exhibitors and the online streaming service which has only grown in its agenda in recent weeks as it readies to ramp up a plethora of original films through 2018.
As it stands though, fans keen on Bong’s touching satirical allegory telling of one girl’s wild adventure above and beyond to rescue her beloved best friend – a superpig among multitudes engineered as a corporate solution to global food scarcity, can expect to see it on the big screen once again. As Screendaily writes, Netflix has announced that Okja will be re-released in 36 theatres across North America this Friday at all iPic theatres, along with an additional 20 locations including within New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, Seattle, and Denver.
The film opened in 190 countries on Netflix back June and stars Ahn Seo-Hyun with Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Giancarlo Esposito, Steven Yeun, and Lily Collins.
Forgive me ahead of time in case the site goes dark for a few extra hours on June 28. Bong Joon-Ho’s latest, Okja, is coming and with the accreditation of many an approving review since debuting at Cannes.
What’s unfortunate there, of course, is the controversy that precipitated from its Cannes arrival with respect to certain rules and the vociferous opposition from theater exhibitors that followed. It ultimately means a smaller audience and espeicially for those who don’t have Netflix (that is still an understandable reality) while the company struggles its advance of a day-and-date agenda.
Will this affect the film’s hopeful success? Who knows? I guess that is either up to the viewers or someone higher above. It’s a pretty obscure view from here so anyone’s guess is as good as mine.
Actress Ahn Seo-Hyun leads the story of a young girl and a gentle giant who get caught in the crossfire between animal rights, corporate greed and scientific ethics. Ahn is joined by Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano and Jake Gyllenhaal, and a second official trailer has emerged. Peep it.
For 10 idyllic years, young Mija has been caretaker and constant companion to Okja—a massive animal and an even bigger friend—at her home in the mountains of South Korea. But that changes when a family-owned multinational conglomerate Mirando Corporation takes Okja for themselves and transports her to New York, where image obsessed and self-promoting CEO Lucy Mirando has big plans for Mija’s dearest friend.
Director Bong Joon-ho‘s newest sci-fi epic, Snowpiercer, has been a long-awaited event for a LOT of people who haven’t been able to see it since the director’s equally long battle to get his cut of the film released in the U.S.. This week, that all changes with its limited theatrical release starting Friday, and if you needed any more motivation, check out the latest clip below, and by all means, get your tickets today!
SYNOPSIS:
It’s been 18 years since we froze the earth. The few remaining humans live on the Snowpiercer, a train on an infinite loop around the globe. For those at the front, it’s a lavish paradise of drugs and sushi in the lap of luxury; for those trapped in the tail section, life is short and cruel.
But change is in the air. Curtis (Chris Evans), desperate to escape the tail of the train, plans an uprising, aided by his mentor Gilliam (John Hurt). What begins as an isolated riot explodes into a mass revolution, an all-or-nothing push to the front of the train, and a war for humanity’s future. Who will live and who will die? How far can they go? Is there hope beyond the frozen wastes?
On June 27, fight your way to the front.
“Snowpiercer,” based on the French graphic novel “Le Transperceneige,” is set in a future where, after a failed experiment to stop global warming, an Ice Age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snow Piercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. A class system evolves on the train but a revolution brews.
Have you ever gotten the feeling of total, absolute frustration from hearing that other people have seen a movie for you? Well, I certainly got that feeling before the The Raid 2 finally hit theaters, and I will be fixing that same problem when I go and see X-Men: Days Of Future Past.
But especially, I know where I will be on the weekend of June 27 when director Bong Joon-Ho‘s newest critically-acclaimed sci-fi action thriller, Snowpiercer, arrives on its day-and-date digital, VoD and theatrical release. And to think that all it took was a roughly a whole year after it was released in South Korea and other audiences around the world to much fan appeal.
Nearly a year. It never should have taken this long.
SYNOPSIS:
In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off all life on the planet except for a lucky few that boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe, where a class system evolves.
It’s been a long, long await for South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho as he sought to see his latest film, Snowpiercer, get its day in theaters around the world, including in North America. Evidently, as the film launched its success story with rave reviews from its previous releases in South Korea, Hong Kong and France, in addition to its positive test audience ratings for the director’s cut against TWC’s, the film suffered from a major snag last year as Harvey Weinstein felt it necessary to chop the film down for its U.S. audiences in southern states so it would sell better as a condensed action movie.
This obviously did not settle well with the director and it ultimately lead to a long and winding debate that kept the film’s North American release in an unnecessary state of limbo while Bong and TWC sorted out their differences, until Thursday night when Deadline reported that a deal has finally been reached for Bong to keep his two and a half-hour duration in exchange for limited theatrical release instead of a nationwide release as originally planned in 2012 when TWC acquired the rights.
Snowpiercer is based on a French graphic novel by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette and tells the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth where a failed experiment to stave off global warming has forced the planet’s remaining surviving inhabitants into a global train known as the Snowpiecer, where its survivors are broken into an oppressive class system that spills into war. The news comes just a little less than two months before the film’s lead actor, Chris Evans is set to appear in Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Snowpiercer is written by Bong and screenwriter Kelly Masters, with actor Song Kang-ho, actresses Tilda Swinton and Allison Pill, actors John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris and Ewen Bremner, and actresses Octavia Spencer and Ah Sung-ko.
Stay tuned for more info.
For a film that has done significantly well on an international level, you would think The Weinstein Company, who own the rights in English-speaking territories to director Bong Joon-Ho‘s highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic contained sci-fi action epic, Snowpiercer, would stop holding out on the film that the rest of us truly deserve to see by now. But nope, that’s not the case. While we last learned that exclusive test viewings Bong‘s version here in America rated higher than TWC’s edited version, in addition to the director and distributor “talking a lot” about keeping the final cut, nothing has been said publicly so far about what WILL be done. So yeah, I sense the bitterness among fans, and it’s frustrating. Kinda like talking to a brick wall at this point.
It was intially reported back in August that film distributors over at The Weinstein Company were going to release a version of director Bong Joon-Ho‘s latest science fiction action epic, Snowpiercer, which would have twenty minutes of the film removed. The initial report from IF Magazine quoted writer and film festival programmer Tony Rayns who said “TWC people have told Bong that their aim is to make sure the film ‘will be understood by audiences in Iowa… and Oklahoma,’”, further adding that TWC’s treatment of the film for the U.S., which would unnecessarily add opening and closing voice overs and remove a lot of the character development that was so elemental for the film’s success, was also reflection on other English-speaking areas for which they pre-bought the rights to the film earlier on.
At this point, the film was already generating favorable reviews which only increased between its South Korean premiere, its record-breaking debut in France and the upward response from audiences in. ever since, which may or may not have been an indicator that TWC might finally be changing its way of thinking. This week, The Hollywood Reporter now reports some positive news that considering all of the viewer feedback on the film, there is a BIG chance that TWC’s version of Snowpiercer COULD grant English-language audiences in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand a chance to embrace Bong’s unaltered vision of the film that is currently being shown elsewhere. The details of that report were made by Bong himself during his attendance at Marta Del Plata in Argentina wherin it was mentioned a prior trip to New York was spent in lengthy negotiations with The Weinstein Company on how to distribute the film to English territories. “I stayed in New York for two weeks before coming here to Mar del Plata, mostly because of this matter,” said Bong. “And the good news is that after all the speculation and comments about that 20-minute cut, and considering the original version that was released in Korea and France also will be released in Japan and Hong Kong, we have been talking a lot about keeping the original cut for the U.S. release, so what I can say is…have faith.”
The news also comes just after Bong was quoted in a recent interview with Twitchfilm‘s own James Marsh where it was revealed that Bong‘s cut of the film was already scoring higher this year for two American test audiences while negotiations were still on-going between TWC and Korean investor CJ. “…the funny thing is once there did exist a 20-minute cut-out version, a Weinstein version of Snowpiercer, they had a screening of that version in New Jersey in July.” Bong said. “Then CJ did another test screening of my original version in LA with a normal American audience, and with my version the response was much higher than the scores from the Weinstein version…”
This probably won’t signal a complete about-face for the way The Weinstein Company does its business. But it is early, and if anything, this should be a huge wake-up call for the company that has become nefarious for chopping up films to sell to English-speaking audiences who now seem ready to move forward and get over the need for detrimentally simplistic measures of film enjoyment.
The latest film that got the Weinstein treatment was Wong Kar Wai’s highest grossing film to date, The Grandmaster, from which TWC’s own rearrangememt involved trimming 22 minutes of the original Chinese release with Martin Scorsese and Samuel L. Jackson tacked on for what ended up only being a limited U.S. release, as opposed to the wider one it could have gotten. That particular film ended up with its own fair share of negative reviews, as well as other critical write-ups that were more of a mix of positive and defensive reflections of the film that probably didn’t do much to extinguish anyone’s dissent on a major level.
That said, we don’t yet know if Snowpiercer will also get the nationwide release it deserves, and I’m no expert on theater releases. But if TWC knows what’s good for itself on a business front, and if there is some serious money to be made in a movie that has proven consistently to perform well above average like Snowpiercer, then the film ought to make its way to more than just a few arthouse theaters this time around. It just seems like the much more clearer and logical choice.
We need a release date already.
The Marta Del Plata film festival closes this Sunday.
With further plans to release the film in Latin America, Snowpiercer is set to release in Hong Kong next week, followed by Taiwan on December 6, 2013, Estonia on December 20, 2013 , and next year in Japan (trailer below), Sweden and Greece on February 7, 14 and 20, and just two months prior to the wide release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, starring Snowpiercer lead actor Chris Evans, and also…Samuel L. Jackson!
Hm. Would you look at that! 🙂
Based on a screenplay co-written by Bong along with Kelly Masterson, SNOWPIERCER is the live-action adaptation of the French graphic novel, “Le Transperceniege” by Benjamin Legrand and Jacques Lob, which takes place in the year 2035 where world war has thrown the planet into a snow-covered post apocalyptic state, forcing Earth’s last survivors to board the high-tech Snowpiercer train. When their worlds collide, the survivors, divided by economic class, face an ironic turn of events causing their last best hope to become a dangerous and deadly battleground that will endanger what remains of humanity.