A Family Thing: NEON To Distribute Bong Joon-Ho’s PARASITE

Disclosure: Tim League, founder and CEO of Birth.Movies.Death.’s parent company Alamo Drafthouse, is a co-founder of NEON.

Like all good film geeks, we here at BMD are huge fans of Bong Joon-Ho. Memories of Murder. The Host. Snowpiercer. Okja. The man has already minted a handful of bona fide masterworks, so any news regarding a new picture from the Korean auteur is music to our ears. 

Well, it seems like our pals at NEON share the same great taste, as they've acquired North American distribution rights to his latest, Parasite. According to /Film, the official synopsis goes:

"Penned by Bong, Parasite is a peculiar tale about two families who are worlds apart yet somewhat alike, portraying a striking reality of the world we live in. The film, which just wrapped production, also stars Lee Sun-Kyun (A Hard Day, Our Sunhi), Cho Yeo-Jeong (Obsessed), Choi Woo-Shik (Okja, Train to Busan), Park So-Dam (The Priests), and Chang Hyae-Jin (Poetry)."

NEON is eyeing a 2019 date for Parasite, but there's no real month being narrowed down as of yet. The acquistion continues NEON's reputation as being one of the more exciting distributors operating today, as they're the same company that can give us I, Tonya, Three Identical Strangers, and Border, all on the same slate. Since Bong's last movie went straight to Netflix (outside of a few select screenings), it'll be great to revisit such a precise artist's work in a theatrical setting.