Four years after conquering the Oscars, Bong Joon-ho is ready to show the world what he’s got next. At CinemaCon in Las Vegas the director of “Parasite” appeared during Warner Bros.’ presentation to offer the first-ever look at his next film, “Mickey 17,” alongside his lead star Robert Pattinson.
“It’s based on the novel ‘Mickey 7,’ but the number is based on the number of times he dies. I killed him ten more times,” Bong said. “It’s a film about a simple man who ends up saving the world. I’m not the kind of filmmaker that makes a simple hero’s journey but I found a way into it.”
The trailer, which features a morbid and dark sense of humor, shows Pattinson as Mickey, a man whose job is to be an “expendable,” a man who works on a spaceship until he dies on the job and is replaced by another version of himself through a process called “human printing.” As an expendable, he is sent out on the most dangerous jobs, where he has his limbs chopped off by space debris and devoured by aliens.
But then something unexpected happens: one of his clones doesn’t die. Now there are multiples of Mickey: Mickey 17 and Mickey 18…and they don’t get along.
“In the story, no one can know there are multiples,” Pattinson said at CinemaCon. “Mickey 17 is a person who has no expectations in his life, but his life keeps pushing his expectations even lower.”
Bong Joon-ho reached new heights with “Parasite” when it became the first non-English film to win the Best Picture Oscar and the second film, alongside the classic “Marty,” to win both Best Picture and the Palme D’Or at Cannes.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg for the director’s career, having long established himself as one of South Korea’s most prominent filmmakers with hits like “The Host,” “Okja,” and “Memories of Murder.” Bong previously ventured into the world of Hollywood with “Snowpiercer,” another sci-fi film that grappled with inequality on a train traveling forever on a frozen planet. But now he will bring forth the highest budgeted film of his career.
“Mickey 17” hits theaters on January 31.
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