Netflix To Release OKJA In June
Netflix believes in strange creatures, enough to spend $50 million on South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho’s new movie, Okja, co-written with Jon Roson. Moreover, Netflix has promised him “complete creative freedom.”
Bong’s follow up to the cult hit Snowpiercer, Okja stars chameleon Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Giancarlo Esposito, and Lilly Collins.
The human lead for Okja is South Korean actress Seo-Hyun Ahn, who plays Mija, a young girl who befriends a strange creature and risks everything to save her best friend from a powerful, multi-national company. This coming of age comedy drama follows her across continents, fighting against the harsh realities of genetically modified food experimentation, globalization, eco-terrorism, and humanity’s obsession with image, branding, and self-promotion.
Bong has stated that the creature is “a very shy and introverted animal. It’s a unique animal that we’ve not seen before.”
Bong is no stranger to monsters. The last film he did starring a large creature was the critically beloved monster movie The Host, in which a Korean family tries to rescue a young girl from a monster.
Swinton recently portrayed an ancient mystic in Doctor Strange. She was also in Bong’s 2013 Snowpiercer. Gyllenhaal’s breakthrough performance was in the psychedelic thriller Donnie Darko and has been in films such as Brokeback Mountain and Jarheads. Collins played Snow White in 2012’s Mirror Mirror. Esposito and Yeun are veterans of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, respectively.
Okja will debut on Netflix June 28, 2017.
Check out the teaser trailer below and let us know what you think!
