Awards season ended with a bang on Sunday night as Parasite and its director Bong Joon-ho walked away with four Oscars, including the first-ever Best Picture win for a foreign language film. It was an exciting night for the industry as a whole, but the story of the Korean phenomenon is actually just getting started, as Bong Joon-ho and Adam McKay are teaming up to bring a six-episode Parasite limited series to HBO.
Director Bong told TheWrap last month that the series will be “a six-hour-long film” that tells some of the stories that he wasn’t able to include in the two-hour runtime of the original film, such as why the housekeeper has bruises on her face when she returns to the house midway through the film, or what her relationship was with the architect. And now, weeks later, we may know who will star in the show as well, and it’s something of a surprise.
On Monday, Collider reported that Mark Ruffalo is in the running for a lead role in the HBO show. When reached for comment, HBO told Collider that “to speculate on any characters or casting is wildly premature,” but sources say that there is mutual interest between director Bong and Ruffalo, though negotiations haven’t begun yet. TMZ managed to find Ruffalo hours after the report was published to ask him about the rumor.
“That’d be amazing,” Ruffalo said to TMZ. “He’s [Bong] amazing. I love him. His speech last night was incredible. He made an amazing movie and I’d be honored to be able to play something in that. It’s so beautiful. You know how it is nowadays, nothing’s done until it’s done, but maybe one day. It’d be cool to be a part of.”
Ruffalo, infamous for his Avengers leaks, didn’t exactly shut down the rumors. If anything, he might have confirmed that there have at least been discussions for him to take part in the series. That said, the development process has just begun, and scripts haven’t even been written, so anything could happen before filming begins. It’s also unclear who Ruffalo would play, as he clearly wasn’t in the movie. If the plan is to have this be an American reimagining of some kind, he might be taking over for Song Kang-ho’s role as the father of the poor family.
