Bong Joon Ho Will Film His Next Project In The U.S. And Korea

Bong Joon Ho, the director behind the ecological horror film "The Host" and the internationally acclaimed science fiction film "Snowpiercer" is planning to set his next film at least partially in the U.S.

The director is currently in the U.S. He was invited by the Jacob Burns Film center in Pleasantville, New York to participate as an international fellow at center's campus. The center, which is associated with several American film celebrities, offers programs in new media, documentary and fiction film production, screenwriting, and animation.

While in residence, Bong Joon Ho has taken part in question and answer sessions and interviews in conjunction with a retrospective of his work. During a recent interview with Twitchfilm, he talked about his next project, a film with the working title of "Okja."

The film will be set in New York and Korea. The film's dialogue will be partially in English will but mostly be in Korean.

It would not be the writer-producer-director's first time working with English dialogue.

His film "Snowpiercer" featured an international cast that included actors Tilda Swinton, Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris and Go Seung Ah. The film focused on a future in which the world was frozen and a microcosm of society survived in a train that hurtled through the wasteland. Social order on the train was also frozen in place, with cruel rules that benefited the haves more than the have-nots. The dialogue for that film was mostly in English.

According to the Korean Film Council, Bong Joon Ho would not say more about his upcoming film project except that he already completed the first draft of the screenplay. Bong Joon Ho is also an acclaimed screenwriter. He wrote the screenplays for all his films, from "Barking Dogs Never Bite" to Park Yoo Chun's award-winning first film "Sea Fog." He also produced "Sea Fog" but he did not direct it.

The director did say that the budget for "Okja" would fall between that of "The Host" and "Snowpiercer" so it would be somewhere between $11and $40 million. Both films earned more than $80 million.

Bong said that in the future he would focus on directing and that he envisioned taking on smaller projects. Besides his feature films, he also worked on seven short films and wrote screenplays for a few others. He acted in two short films and had cameos in three more films.