Bong Joon-Ho Has A Crazy Idea For A Musical

Now that Bong Joon-Ho has won a handful of Oscars, he can pretty much do whatever he wants. And one of them is a musical.

But this is no ordinary musical. In an interview with Empire magazine, the 50-year-old Parasite director said that in his musical, “characters would begin singing, then think, ‘Oh my God, f*** this, this is too cheesy,’ and stop suddenly. There are amazing musical films, like Singin’ in the Rain’. But when I watch them, I feel very embarrassed and start blushing. So it would have to be different.”

Besides this bizarre musical (is he serious? Or is it fatigue talking?), Bong’s list of passion projects include “a moody noir in the vein of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, set along the US border with Mexico; and a big action movie a la the Steve McQueen classic The Great Escape.

It isn’t clear whether they are the same projects he mentioned in Variety last November — one in Korean, the other English. “Both projects are not big films,” said Bong then. “They’re the size of Parasite or Mother. The Korean film is located in Seoul and has unique elements of horror and action. It’s difficult to define the genre of my films. The English project is a drama filmed on a true event that happened in 2016.”

Other than that HBO remake of Parasite he’s developing with Adam McKay, it’ll be a while — especially given the current COVID-19 crisis — before Bong decides what he’ll do next. Right now, he’s getting some much-needed rest from the Oscar madness. He said in Empire, “Now that I finally have time, I’m trying to get back on it, but I’m so exhausted, mentally and physically.” He added, “I’m just a shell of a human.”

Photo: TPG News/Click Photos