After tremendous success with Snowpiercer, an uber-stylish and hyper-violent slice of genre fare, Korean helmer Bong-Joon Ho is now getting his pick of the litter for follow-up Okja. The latest thesp joining the movie‘s veritable line-up of stars is Breaking Bad‘s Giancarlo Esposito.
Like Ho’s previous film, Okja won’t be a straight-laced affair. Part sci-fi and part-drama, the movie is being angled as a creature feature with a difference, as it revolves around a young girl “who must risk everything to prevent a powerful, multi-national company from kidnapping her best friend – a massive genetically-manufactured pig named Okja.”
If you’re not already sold on that unique premise then this ought to satiate your cinematic desires: signed on and raring to go is Snowpiercer‘s Tilda Swinton who is playing not one but two characters. She’ll be doing a Hail, Caesar! and playing twin sisters, one of whom is in the head of the large multi-national corporation. Seeing her dynamic switch in the Coens’ latest, and her sinister turn in Snowpiercer, she looks to be right at home in Okja where she’ll be in cahoots with Esposito’s character.
While he’s not yet named in early reports, he’s described as her right-hand man. Esposito’s most recognized for his turn as Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, the thorn in the side of Walter White. He delivered some chilling lines and cut quite the villainous figure in his time, so expect more dastardly behavior from him.
Both Esposito and Swinton won’t be going it alone though, with a top-notch cast rounded out by Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun and Seo-Hyeon Ahn. As production’s in full swing on Okja, it’s only a matter of time before the first images and a potential teaser surface. Bearing in mind how popular Snowpiercer became on home video and Netflix, Ho’s follow-up is becoming a highly-anticipated outing indeed.
