It was a historic night for Bong Joon Ho's Parasite when it took home four top awards at the 92nd Academy Awards. The South Korean film picked up the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and finally, Best Picture.
According to a report by USA Today, Parasite started off its victory run with an early win for Best Original Screenplay, an award shared by filmmaker Bong Joon Ho and Han Ji Won. In accepting their first award, the duo shared the honors with their families and the actors who made their vision of the film into reality. They also dedicated the award to South Korea and South Korean filmmakers who were always toiling to come to deliver good movies to the world.
Parasite's second win was for the Best Foreign Language film. It bested equally accalimed films like France's Les Misérables, North Macedonia's Honeyland, Poland's Corpus Christi, and Spain's Pain and Glory.
With the Best Foreign Language Film win, director Bong Joon Ho believed that Parasite was done for the night. However, he was surprised when his name was announced as the winner for Best Director. For the category, he was pitted against Martin Scorsese for The Irishman, Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Sam Mendes for 1917 and Todd Phillips for Joker.
In his acceptance speech, he shared the honors with his fellow nominees. He paid tribute to Martin Scorsese for inspiring him when he was young with the quote: "The most personal is the most creative," and thanked Quentin Tarantino for his support for his work.
With the honor, Bong Joon Ho became the first Korean filmmaker to receive a Best Director Oscar and the second director of a foreign language film to achieve the feat, next only to Alfonso Cuaron who won for Roma in 2018.
The biggest win, however, came with the announcement of the Best Picture award before the end of the show. The entire cast of Parasite went up on stage to receive the biggest honor for the night and expressed their gratitude to the Academy for its recognition. Producers also credited the Korean film audience for giving straightforward opinions about what they want that inspire the filmmakers and creators to keep pushing the envelope.
Meanwhile, as Parasite closed out the awards season with an astounding victory, director Bong Joon Ho is already preparing to develop his cinematic masterpiece into an HBO limited series.
According to the writer and director, he will be working with Succession's Adam McKay for the TV series which is expected to run for six episodes, Indiewire reported.
For the TV show, Bong Joon Ho said he will be including the details that flesh out the background of the characters, which he was not able to include in the two-hour film.
"With Parasite, while I was writing the script I had so many more ideas I couldn't convey into the two-hour running time of the film. I knew that if I had a longer running time, I would be able to tell these stories, and that's what I plan to talk about with Adam pretty soon," he said.
No announcement has been made on the release date of the Parasite HBO series but it might still take a while, according to the award-winning director.
