Tarantino to interview South Korean helmer of "Snowpiercer" hit thriller

PanARMENIAN.Net - Bong Joon-ho, the South Korean helmer of Snowpiercer, will hold discussions with U.S. director Quentin Tarantino and DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg in Korea, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Bong is set to appear in an onstage interview with Tarantino Friday at 5 p.m. as part of the 18th Busan International Film Festival that wraps Saturday, October 12.

The Korean filmmaker will go on to meet Katzenberg at CJ Global Creative Forum, an annual event hosted by Korean entertainment giant CJ E&M, to be held Oct. 18 at Sejong University in Seoul. Bong’s Snowpiercer, the most expensive film to be made in Korea and one of the year’s box office hits, was largely backed by CJ Entertainment and awaits release in the U.S., among 167 countries.

CJ Entertainment was a founding investor in DreamWorks SKG in 1995. Paramount later bought the share stake.

Bong and Katzenberg plan to offer their opinions on East-West dynamics as the entertainment industry expands and technology makes new leaps. Katzenberg and Jennifer Yuh Nelson, director of Kung Fu Panda 2, will also take part in a cartoon pitch event for students.

"The forum aims to promote growth of the cultural content industry, one of the cores of a creative economy, by gaining insight into new ideas and success strategies from global industry leaders," said a spokesperson for CJ E&M.

"For this year’s Forum, Mr. Katzenberg and Mr. Bong were invited in recognition of the leading roles both have played in developing globally popular cultural content by synergizing themes and IT technology from the West and Asia."

Snowpiercer is a South Korean sci-fi action thriller film based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob & Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette. The film is directed by Bong Joon-ho, and co-written by Bong and Kelly Masterson. The film stars Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Go Ah-sung, Jamie Bell, Ewen Bremner, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris. The film marks Bong's English-language debut; he has mentioned that approximately 80% of the film was shot in English.

The film is set in a future where a runaway experiment to stop global warming has caused an ice age that killed nearly all life on the planet. The only survivors are the inhabitants of the 'Snowpiercer', a massive train that travels around the planet and is powered by a perpetual-motion engine. Over time a class system evolves on the train, with the elites inhabiting the front of the train and poor inhabiting the back of the train. Tired of their poor living conditions, the riders in the back revolt, attempting to seize control of the engine, which the elites in the front consider sacred.