Eight new character posters have been released for Bong Joon-ho’s post-apocalyptic trainride and first foray into English-language films, “Snowpiercer,” starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer and Jamie Bell. Weinstein Co. picked up English-speaking territories for the film off ten minutes of AFM footage.
Joon-ho joins Park Chan-wook and Kim Jee-woon in 2013 as Korean filmmakers making their move to English-language films; Chan-wook (“Oldboy,” “Thirst”) directed the stylish but fairly terrible “Stoker,” while Jee-woon (“The Good, the Bad and the Weird”) directed Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Last Stand.”
Speaking of “Old Boy,” American director Spike Lee has a remake of the Chan-wook film in the pipeline; it’s due in theaters on October 11, and stars Elizabeth Olsen and Sharlto Copley.
“Snowpiercer” is set in a futuristic Ice Age–after a failed experiment to stop global warming– where the 1 % run what’s left of the world: a single train with no destination, The Snowpiercer. Its inhabitants are divided by class; the lower-class passengers in one of the last cars stage an uprising, moving car by car up to the front of the train, where the oppressive rich and powerful ride.
The globalized nature of the film production is notable for combining a local South Korean studio and producers with American stars and crew. Joon-ho (“The Host,” “Memories of Murder”) based the script on the French graphic novel “Le Transperceneige.”
While the movie opens in some markets this summer, TWC has not slated a stateside release date.
The posters are in Korean, and some of the actors are so disguised (like Swinton) that it’s hard to tell who’s who. From top to bottom: Evans, Ko Ah-sung, Swinton, Ewen Bremner, Bell, John Hurt, Korean superstar Song Kang-ho (a regular in Joon-ho’s films), and Spencer:
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