When we found out that Bong Joon ho and HBO were developing a Parasite TV show with Adam McKay last week, our first question was “Why?” (followed shortly by “How?” and “No seriously, why?”). We still don’t know “why,” but now we know slightly more about “how,” with Deadline reporting that Bong says the idea behind the TV show is to expand on stories he didn’t have room for in the movie. “While I was writing the script,” Bong explained through his translator, “I had so many more ideas I couldn’t convey into the two-hour running time of the film.” He says he could’ve told more stories if the movie (which got a good number of Oscar nominations this morning) had been longer, and that’s what he’s going to talk about with McKay “pretty soon.”
So what does that mean? For starters, the Parasite TV show must be very early if Bong is bringing up things he’d like to talk about with Adam McKay, but also it sounds like this won’t necessarily be a straight remake of the movie. A retelling with American actors still seems like the safest and most obvious route, but at the very least it should theoretically be about stories and themes that Bong wanted to be in the original movie but didn’t have room for. That’s theoretically a good idea, right?