Two of the world’s most beloved filmmakers, John Carpenter and Bong Joon-ho, have agreed to collaborate on one of the South Korean director’s forthcoming projects – which he says will be a horror film.
Bong, who is currently promoting his new sci-fi film Mickey 17, met with Carpenter during a special 4k restoration screening of Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing in Los Angeles.
At a post-screening Q&A conducted by the Parasite director, Bong, via his interpreter, said: “So you’ve created a lot of scores for your films and most of them were done by yourself. Would you be interested in doing music for another film?”
“My plan is for my next, next movie –” he continue, but before he could explain any further details, Carpenter interjected and said: “I wanna do your score.”
The two sealed the deal with a handshake, much to the delight of the audience who greeted the news with a huge round of applause.
At the time of writing, details about Bong’s forthcoming film remain vague. In 2021 he said: “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 film based on a true event that happened in 2016. Of course, I won’t know until I finish the script, but it has to be set half in the US and half in the US.”
Although many of Bong’s films are exercises in genre cinema he is yet to make a film that is explicitly horror. His closest to date is 2006’s The Host, a monster movie in whch a mutated beast goes on a rampage through Seoul.
Carpenter, 77, has rightfully earned the nickname the “Master of Horror”, having made numerous classics including The Thing, Halloween, They Live and The Fog. The last film he directed was 2010’s The Ward.
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As well as directing his films, Carpenter has also composed several iconic soundtracks for his movies such as Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct 13, Big Trouble in Little China and six Halloween films.
Mickey 17, meanwhile, despite opening at number one at the box office, has struggled to bring in an audience amid a series of setbacks.
Originally set for release in March 2024, Bong’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning Parasite faced several delays, which he has attributed to extenuating circumstances around the Hollywood strikes.
Based on the novel Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton, the film sees Robert Pattinson play an expendable employee who dies on missions and is re-printed time and time again. Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo also star.
