Parasite director Bong Joon Ho has addressed the delays around his upcoming sci-fi feature Mickey 17 ahead of its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.
At a press conference in Seoul today (January 20) alongside leading man Robert Pattinson, the filmmaker set the record straight after speculation there had been conflict with studio Warner Bros regarding the final cut of the film.
“Not a single one of my films has ever been released without some change in its release date – it just seems that there has been more interest in this particular film, which has led to more coverage,” said Bong, who has not released a feature since Parasite won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019 and four Oscars including best film.
Initially set for release in March 2024, Warner Bros shifted the opening to January 2025 and then into February. Bong confirmed strikes in Hollywood delayed the film, which granted more time to complete the project.
“A lot of it had to do with the US film industry including the writers’ and actors’ strikes,” he explained. “These external factors led to the delays, not complications with re-edits or reshoots. The film was first contracted on the condition of me having final cut, and the studio let me have creative control.”
Representatives for Warner Bros in Korea told Screen that the Berlinale will host the world premiere for Mickey 17, where it will screen in the special gala section. It is set to open in South Korea on February 28 before rolling out through Warner Bros in a large number of territories including the US the following week.
“Ultimately, I’m happy that the world will get to see the film in March, and that Korea will see it first in February,” added Bong.
Based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, the film stars Pattinson as an “expendable” employee sent on dangerous missions, who is “re-printed” after dying. The story unfolds when his company makes an 18th iteration, not realising that Mickey 17 is still alive. The cast also includes Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo.
Bong also produces through his outfit Offscreen, alongside Plan B’s Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner and Kate Street Pictures’ Dooho Choi in the US.
Mickey 17 also marks the first time the South Korean auteur has written a screenplay without a co-writer. Bong referenced the growth in artificial intelligence (AI) when discussing his approach to the script and quoted “move 78”, in which by Lee Sedol – a master player of the game Go – outsmarted the AlphaGo AI programme in 2016.
“I ask myself every night, how can I write a screenplay that AI could not?” he said. “I want to make a ‘move 78’ in every other page of my screenplays. How can we outsmart AI? I want to become a writer who writes one screenplay a year that AI could never replicate.”
Cronenberg comparison
Pattinson, on his first promotional trip to Korea with Mickey 17, concurred with Bong’s unique approach to storytelling. “There’s something about watching his movies where the world feels so idiosyncratic – it’s so unique to him,” said the actor. “To me, they make sense on a very personal and emotional level. You can’t define exactly why they work, but they always do.”
The star of the Twilight franchise, Matt Reeves’ The Batman and the upcoming Christopher Nolan adaptation of The Odyssey added: “Bong is probably one of four or five directors in the world, working now at the level he’s working at, who has that kind of appeal to every single actor in the world—everybody wants to work with him.”
The pair also spoke about differing filming cultures and environments. “Because director Bong is so confident in his plan for shooting, you end up shooting a lot shorter sequences than I was used to,” said Pattinson. “Normally, you would shoot a master first, then shoot the entire scene again and again. But with Bong, he’s like, ‘We’re doing two lines, then we’re moving on.’ The only other person who I’ve worked with who was like that was [David] Cronenberg, who would only shoot very limited coverage.”
“In Korea, we mostly edit on set,” added Bong. “Next to the director’s monitor, there’s an on-set editor, who works his magic. But in America, this seems very rare. Even when I was filming Snowpiercer, all the actors were surprised that we would edit on set, but that’s what most Korean directors do.”
Bong also said that Pattinson had been his first choice to play Mickey. “Robert is, of course, known for playing superheroes like Batman, but [I had also seen him in] the Safide brothers’ Good Time and [Robert Eggers’] The Lighthouse. He has demonstrated remarkable talent in such great independent American films, so I had always been interested in him.
“The role [of Mickey] demanded duality, shifting between the pitiful and slightly stupid Mickey 17 to the manic yet charismatic Mickey 18, so I had Pattinson in mind from the start. The casting process was relatively easy too, as it seems he wanted to play an oddball character like this.”
Bong is now working on his first animated feature for Korea’s Barunson C&C, which explores the connection between deep-sea creatures and humans. Last year, it was reported that the project would receive an unprecedented budget of around $50m (KRW70bn), making it the most expensive Korean film to date and will reunite the filmmaker with longtime collaborators including Seoul-based VFX studio 4th Creative Party and cinematographer Hong Kyung-po (Parasite).
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