Matt here, do you remember when Oldboy totally kicked your ass and left your jaw dropping to the fucking ground at what you were watching? That ‘holy shit’ moment, where you can’t believe what you just witnessed, a movie that completely messes with your emotion and doesn’t want to apologize about it?
Well here’s a bit of exciting news to chew on.
Variety say that for the first time in history, a Hollywood studio is helping to finance and has pre-empt’d a distribution deal to a Korean movie that has not yet begun filming. The movie is Thirst, a vampire yarn from Chan-Wook Park (The Vengeance Trilogy) which Universal and Focus Features have shown great faith in.
Pic is about a priest who participates in a medical experiment to find a cure for a deadly disease with traumatic repercussions.
“Thirst” stars Song Kang-ho (“Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” “The Host,” “The Good the Bad and the Weird”) and Shin Ha-kyun (”Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance”). Involving unusually risqué elements, pic also stars Kim Ok-bi (“Dasepo Naughty Girls,”) as leading lady
Park has co-written the movie with his collaborator on Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and his last movie I’m A Cyborg, But That’s Ok.
The movie should hit mid-2009 and is a CJ Entertainment production.
Discuss: Did anyone see Park’s rather jolting career change that was his light hearted fantasy movie last year? How uber excited are you to hear Park is getting a huge mark of confidence for his vamp movie?
One Comment
To answer the last two questions: yes and meh…
Park was quite vocal about wanting to shift his career away from the vengeance movie typecasting so I’m A Cyborg was a logical step to do this. The end result was pretty good but obviously just an attempt to do something completely different.
As for the Hollywood funding, I’ll reserve judgement until we see the finished product. it could go either way – if the funding means that he’s able to achieve more than he could with a Korean budget then great. On the other hand, if the studio are going to interfere or try to “Westernise” Park’s vision in order to make it “more commercial” then it’s a very bad thing.