When Parasite became the first non-English language film in Oscars history to win best picture in 2019, it marked a breakthrough moment for Korean cinema.
But the surge of interest that followed the director Bong Joon-ho’s international success has not translated into a thriving local film industry, according to another of its leading lights.
The director Jang Joon-hwan said K-cinema was struggling after the arrival of Netflix and other streaming platforms, with movies often rushed on to streaming platforms, and box office ticket sales suffering as a consequence.
Jang, whose 2004 cult sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet is being remade by the Poor Things director, Yorgos Lanthimos, said Korean cinema was going through a “very precarious period” because Korean viewers would increasingly prefer to wait for films to come out on streaming platforms than pay more to go to the cinema.
“I hope that such a day comes that Korean films are being introduced to wider audiences and we can all enjoy them together, however as a Korean film director in Korea, [it’s] a very difficult and challenging time with the advent of Netflix and the [streaming] platforms. In this post-pandemic period cinemagoers have dropped dramatically, so investment has dropped. There are less Korean films being made,” he said.
But he acknowledged that platforms such as Netflix had “introduced a lot of new international fans to Korean content”, through hit shows such as Squid Game.
Speaking ahead of the British Film Institute’s Echoes In Time season of Korean cinema, Jang added that although many people first became acquainted with Korean cinema through Parasite, which depicts socioeconomic inequality in the country, in reality its global emergence was not “explosive”, but rather a “gradual longterm effect”, starting with international audiences becoming increasingly familiar with Korean films and culture since the 1990s.
He hoped that international audiences would increasingly seek out low budget, independent Korean films made by the newer generation of Korean film-makers, such as those by Kim Ki-duk and Hong Sang-soo.
Jang was originally pencilled to direct the English-language reboot of his film, which will be called Bugonia, but had to pull out for health reasons, though he remains executive producer. He said he was “delighted and relieved” when Lanthimos was able to step in.
“He’s an incredibly colourful director with a very strong individual directing style. Even I’m very curious as to what his version of Save the Green Planet will look like. In that respect it’s a very fitting director who’s joined,” he said.
Although little is known about the remake, which is in post-production and due to premiere in the US in November 2025, one of the main changes is a gender swap for one of the protagonists, a powerful pharmaceutical executive named Kang Man-shik in the original, which Emma Stone will play. Jang said this was one of the last amendments to the script that he made with the Succession writer Will Tracy.
“I thought about having a powerful female character who’s in conflict with the male protagonist, that it would create an opportunity for a different type of drama, intensifying a different type of conflict,” he said.
The film’s producer, Ari Aster, has said that part of the reason for the reboot of the film is that it echoes important sociocultural themes in American society today, in particular the rise of conspiracy theories.
Jang said: “What I’ve heard is there are many Americans who firmly believe in conspiracy theories, many people live entirely in this online world absorbing online content and very young people do that. I’ve heard many people in American society are similar to the character of Byeong-gu in the film.”
The original film follows the story of Lee Byeong-gu, whose traumatic past has made him violent, and who believes that aliens from Andromeda PK 45 are about to attack Earth, and that he is the only one who can prevent them. Jang was partly inspired by an early online rumour that circulated after the film Titanic, which asserted that its star Leonardo DiCaprio was an alien who wanted to conquer Earth by seducing its women.
“Given it’s over 20 years since making the film, the fact these stories can still appeal and are relevant to audiences today to me is on the one hand very sad, that there continues to be violence between human beings, there continues to be war, continues to be adverse environmental impact of us living on the planet, [and it shows] how fragile our minds can be and fragile minds resort to violence,” said Jang.
The London Korean film festival takes place at BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière and Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) 1-13 November. Echoes In Time: Korean Films of The Golden Age and New Cinema is at BFI Southbank until 31 December
