Ari Aster to produce remake of Korean film Save the Green Planet!

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Fresh off the Best Picture winning success of Bong Joon Ho's PARASITE, production company CJ is now teaming with HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMAR writer/director Ari Aster for an English language remake of the 2003 South Korean cult film SAVE THE GREEN PLANET!

CJ will be financing the remake, and the company's Francis Chung will be producing it with Ari Aster and his producing partner Lars Knudsen. Fred Lee, Ini Chung, and Khan Kwon will be co-producing and overseeing the development of the project. Miky Lee, Young-ki Cho, and Jerry Ko serve as executive producers.

The original SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! was directed by Joon-hwan Jang, who will be returning to helm the remake from a screenplay that's being written by Will Tracy, a writer on HBO's Succession and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

The simple synopsis of the original film says it's about 

a man who believes the world is on the verge of an alien invasion and sets out to save the planet by first kidnapping his boss. 

Here's the long one: 

Joon-hwan Jang imagines the fate of the human race hinging on Byun-gu, a bitter, paranoid and eccentric beekeeper who, with the help of his tightrope walker girlfriend, Sooni, kidnaps a powerful and successful businessman, Man-sik. Byun-gu believes that Man-sik is an alien from the planet Andromeda, one of many hiding among us and plotting to destroy the Earth in a few days. Amphetamine-popping Byun-gu sees himself as the planet’s last hope, and sets about torturing Man-sik with relish, trying to convince him to contact the “Royal Prince” and call off Armageddon. A battle of wits and wills ensues, with Man-sik trying to convince his captors that he’s human and attempting to escape. Man-sik recognizes Byun-gu as a disgruntled former employee whose comatose mother suffers from a mysterious illness. It begins to seem that Byun-gu’s true motivation may be personal, but he’s still ruthlessly determined to get Man-sik to confess and cooperate, even if he has to risk killing him. Meanwhile, a dishevelled detective, Chu, and his young acolyte, Inspector Kim, discover that the person who kidnapped Man-sik may have struck several times before, always with deadly results.

Miky Lee had this to say about the remake project: 

One thing we learned from our success with PARASITE is that audiences globally are excited to see genre-bending films with big themes. Jang is a master of this in his own right, and we’re so glad to be working alongside Ari, Lars, and Will to help translate what made the original so special to an English language version that feels relevant to what’s going on today."

Aster and Knudsen provided the following statement: 

Swinging with youthful abandon between white-knuckle suspense, absurd slapstick, grim horror and a deeply felt (and earned) sense of tragedy, SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! is one of the most remarkable films to come out of South Korea – among this recent wave or any wave, for that matter. When we heard that director Jang was passionate about revisiting this iconic work, bringing it to the US and updating it to reflect the mess of the world today (which feels even more ripe for this kind of apocalyptic skewering than when the film was first released), we leapt at the chance to be a part of it. We’re honored to be partnering with CJ and with the brilliant director Jang."

Honestly, I had never heard of SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! before this remake announcement, but since it sounds completely insane I'm now interested in checking it out, and very interested in seeing how this remake is going to turn out.