After producing Bong Joon-ho’s ground-breaking, multiple Oscar-winning film Parasite, CJ Entertainment has announced it will finance and produce an English language remake of genre bending Korean film Save the Green Planet!, alongside Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg production banner (Midsommar, Hereditary).
A film that has achieved modern cult classic status since its release in 2003, the uniquely offbeat, black comedy, sci-fi thriller was written and directed by Joon-hwan Jang (When the Day Comes), and lived up to its promise as something nobody has seen before, or can describe easily. Jang is attached to direct the English language remake. Will Tracy (HBO’s "Succession") has been tapped to write the adapted screenplay.
Executive producers are CJ Group Vice Chairwoman Miky Lee, CJ Entertainment’s Young-ki Cho and Jerry Ko. Producers are Francis Chung, CJ’s Head of U.S. Productions, Aster and Knudsen.
In the original film, a traumatized young man abducts Korean leaders, believing they're toxic reptilian aliens - a fifth column launching a takeover of beloved Earth. Stumped law enforcement geniuses half-seriously hire a disgraced, disheveled private detective with a long-ago history of super-crime solving. The alienated South Korean youngster Lee Byeong-gu builds an isolated basement command post/torture chamber/film studio to force the awful truth out of the slimy, uncooperative politicians and businesspeople, then alert the public. Byeong-gu is helped by his devoted girlfriend, who buys his theories, but wonders if his horrible childhood has colored his thinking.
Commented Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen commented on the remake, "Swinging with youthful abandon between white-knuckle suspense, absurd slapstick, grim horror and a deeply felt (and earned) sense of tragedy, Save the Green Planet is one of the most remarkable films to come out of South Korea - among this recent wave or any wave, for that matter. When we heard that director Jang was passionate about revisiting this iconic work, bringing it to the US and updating it to reflect the mess of the world today (which feels even more ripe for this kind of apocalyptic skewering than when the film was first released), we leapt at the chance to be a part of it. We're honored to be partnering with CJ and with the brilliant director Jang."
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