Dear Gossips,
In 2020, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture for Parasite. He had previously directed the masterful Memories of Murder, as well as international hits The Host and Mother, and he’s made a couple of films for the Hollywood system, Snowpiercer and Okja.
What I’m saying is, Bong Joon-ho is incredibly established, widely regarded as a modern master, literally held to be one of the best living directors working today. He’s made movies that have crossed language and cultural barriers to become global hits, he’s won Oscars, he’s won the Palme d’Or—you can count on one hand the number of people in the entire world in a position to tell Bong Joon-ho about his work.
David Zaslav is not one of those people. AND YET.
Bong’s post-Oscar follow-up is Mickey 17, a futuristic sci-fi starring Robert Pattinson and based on a book by Edward Ashton. The film was shot in 2022, and was supposed to come out this year, but was pushed back to January 2025 because of “IMAX availability” and something something the Lunar New Year. If you think scheduling the release of a major event film with a nine-figure budget around the moon sounds a little shaky—even if it is a lucky omen, January is not a month wherein films, especially big budget ones, thrive—brace yourself, because the situation might be quite dire.
A new report alleges that the delay has nothing to do with IMAX or whatever else, but that Warner Brothers is wrangling with Bong over the final cut, as the studio wants a more “more accessible” version of the film. And if THIS sounds depressingly familiar, then you remember the fight over Snowpiercer over a decade ago. That time, Bong wrangled with Harvey Weinstein over final cut, because Weinstein wanted an “accessible” cut of that film, too. Congratulations David Zaslav, you now have something in common with HARVEY WEINSTEIN.
I had an instinct last year that if anyone other than internationally beloved and recent Oscar winning filmmaker Bong was making Mickey 17, the folks at Warners would just delete it off the server and take whatever they could in tax write offs, and now I am CERTAIN of that. They’re only wrangling over final cut because they KNOW they can’t trash Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, no one would ever work with them again. (To date, the films they have sh-tcanned have come from directors with little or no clout. James Gunn was a producer on Coyote vs. Acme, but given his role as co-chief of DC Studios, the call is coming from inside the house.)
So, they’re “stuck” releasing the latest film from Bong Joon-ho, which has a $150 million budget, and they don’t get it and/or aren’t passionate about it—the project originated under the previous regime—so they’re trying to figure out how to minimize the damage. Thus, the “more accessible” cut, which they undoubtedly hope won’t lose them too much money.
The problem, though, is that movies are not a damage-control business. Movies are racehorses, they’re finicky beasts that consume a huge amount of resources, require a lot of babying, and more often than not, produce more sh-t than ribbons. But every once in a while, your horse wins the Kentucky Derby, and then you’re on top of the world. The part of the movie business David Zaslav refuses to embrace is taking it on the chin when his horse craps out.
You are not going to make a “better” version of Mickey 17 than Bong Joon-ho. You are not going “salvage” something “accessible” from a true artist. What you are going to do is risk getting your teeth kicked in by your precious racehorse. Of course, there’s always a chance Bong knows better than you and has made something people will pay to see—which is what happened with Snowpiercer, Bong’s cut ended up doing so well The Weinstein Company expanded its theatrical run—and you might get that ribbon after all. Either way, it won’t make up for David Zaslav not being hugged enough as a child.
Live long and gossip,
Sarah
