Bong Joon-ho has lined up Robert Pat­tin­son for his next sci-fi epic

After tak­ing a two-year breather fol­low­ing his stun­ning Acad­e­my Award wins in ear­ly 2020 — some of which may have had to do with that pan­dem­ic every­one keeps talk­ing about — Bong Joon-ho is final­ly mak­ing moves on his fol­low-up to Par­a­site. Now one of the world’s fore­most direc­to­r­i­al tal­ents, he’s return­ing to the Hol­ly­wood that Snow­piercer and Okja nev­er real­ly con­quered for anoth­er Eng­lish-lan­guage project on a greater scale than ever.

An exclu­sive from Dead­line broke the news that Bong will go stu­dio for his next fea­ture, direct­ing an adap­ta­tion of the to-be-released nov­el Mickey7 for Warn­er Bros. And what’s more, he’s found a lead­ing man in none oth­er than the most auteur-beloved actor of his gen­er­a­tion, the one and only Robert Pat­tin­son.

In Edward Ashton’s nov­el (due to pub­lish in the first quar­ter of this year), Mickey7 is an Expend­able, a dis­pos­able clone sent on a per­ilous mis­sion to col­o­nize the ice world of Nifl­heim. When he dies, his body is regen­er­at­ed with most of its mem­o­ry intact, Mick­ey hav­ing already under­gone this pro­ce­dure six times before. When Mickey7 gets lost on a dan­ger­ous expe­di­tion and even­tu­al­ly makes his way back to base, he’s pit­ted against the Mickey8 that’s already been whipped up and refus­es to be replaced.

This premise sounds a bit like the upcom­ing Sun­dance selec­tion Dual (in which a woman must fight her own clone to the death) and a bit like Bong’s own Snow­piercer, anoth­er sci-fi epic about human­i­ty fight­ing tooth and nail to sur­vive in a world of frost­bit­ten scarci­ty. If noth­ing else, this time around, Bong will pre­sum­ably have the full resources of a stu­dio at his dis­pos­al for what sounds like his most ambi­tious block­buster-adja­cent vision yet.

There’s no shoot date set as of yet, with plen­ty of bulk­ing-up in the cast­ing depart­ment still to be han­dled before sched­ul­ing can be ham­mered out. But it’s already clear that this will be Bong’s biggest swing yet, the chance to advance from ​“the Steven Spiel­berg of Korea” to sim­ply ​“the next Steven Spielberg.”