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Isn't it odd that Parasite is already being turned into a TV series?

  • From Fargo to M*A*S*H to The Odd Couple, acclaimed movies being remade as TV shows is nothing new. What's odd about Bong Joon Ho working with Adam McKay to turn his acclaimed movie Parasite -- which received six Oscar nominations this morning, including for Best Picture and Best Director -- into an HBO limited series is that it's happening as the South Korean movie is gaining mainstream recognition, says Owen Gleiberman. "Even given the vast history of movies-into-television, the announcement last week that Parasite, Bong Joon Ho’s deliriously ambitious, wildly acclaimed, staggeringly popular South Korean sociological thriller, may now be converted into a limited series for HBO, with Bong and Adam McKay in talks to team up as executive producers, has to count as a total eyebrow-raiser," says Gleiberman. "And part of what’s eyebrow-raising about it is that the news didn’t raise more eyebrows. It barely raised a shrug. One of the headiest, most lavishly praised foreign-language films of its era remade, just like that, into a miniseries. (And we don’t even know yet how it will fare at the Oscars!) Parasite, as a movie, has only begun to carve out its place in the culture, yet the idea that its story, its substance, its themes, its metaphors, its very form is already an utterly malleable thing is a very 21st-century concept. There’s a refreshing lack of pretension to the idea. This isn’t about Bong Joon Ho sweating whether his film gets etched onto a monument of canonical reverence. It’s about Bong, even at the moment he’s being saluted around the world as a newly preeminent maestro, stepping off the pedestal and going with the media flow. I say more power to him. But to ask a genuinely unprecedented question: What would the HBO version of a movie like Parasite look like? More to the point: What does it portend for the future?"

    TOPICS: Parasite, ABC, HBO, 92nd Academy Awards, Adam McKay, Bong Joon Ho, Award Shows, In Development, Oscars