Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst hasn’t played in the United States yet but the remake vultures are already circling it, according to Variety. The trade says that thanks to Twilight‘s popularity and the American moviegoing public’s ignorance and racism, a remake of the new Korean vampire movie could start rocketing ahead in the coming months. Since the film was a co-production with Universal they’ll get first dibs on the remake, but let’s hope they don’t decide to do it and thus delay the release of the original (which I recently saw in an official Focus Features email listed as Release TBD, despite having heard about a summer release).
The Variety article also touches on the other Park Chan-Wook remakes in the works in the US; his entire Vengeance Trilogy is in the hands of one Ugly American or another, it seems. But the article doesn’t mention the long-gestating remake of JSA: Joint Security Area. I hope that film dies; the original is about relations between North and South Korea along the DMZ, and there is simply no analogue in the United States. Not even the hotly disputed Canadian border (we keep insisting Detroit is theirs, they keep denying it).
Park Chan-Wook has a pretty zen outlook on the whole thing. He doesn’t want to be bothered. “I want them to treat my films as if they were books and I was an 18th century writer who has long been dead.” So he wants them to put zombies into his movies. Gotcha.