Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer is headed to TV, with Oldboy's Park Chan-wook directing

Deadline

Vietnamese-American novelist and USC English and American Studies professor Nguyen's bestselling 2015 novel The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is being developed as a TV series. A24 and Rhombus Media have optioned the rights to the book about "a half-French, half-Vietnamese man who served as a spy for Communist forces during the Vietnam War," per Deadline. "The novel follows the unnamed protagonist as he experiences the final days of the historical war, lives in exile in Los Angeles and continues to move throughout Southeast Asia." Nguyen announced the news on Twitter Tuesday night and revealed that the acclaimed South Korean director Park Chan-wook, renowned for his films The Handmaiden and Oldboy, is on board as director. "His OLDBOY was a big influence on THE SYMPATHIZER, and I can't imagine a better person to direct this TV adaptation with @rhombusmedia!" Nguyen tweeted, adding: "I hope Park Chan-wook, who did wonders with the octopus in OLDBOY, will be equally imaginative with the squid in THE SYMPATHIZER..."