Park Chan-Wook Wraps Up 박쥐 (Thirst) Shoot. And He Says it Kicks Ass

Who knows, maybe 싸이보그지만 괜찮아 (I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK) could be the quiet before the storm. Another storm like the revenge trilogy?

Mind you, I did enjoy the film, but just like 놈놈놈 (The Good, The Bad, The Weird) it felt somewhat… minor? Particularly minor when you consider what Park Chan-Wook and Bong Joon-Ho are waiting to unleash upon us for 2010, but also what Park just completed shooting, his “priest-turns-vampire” requiem 박쥐 (Thirst). Production has been quite secretive as always with Park’s films, but they at least had the courtesy to tell us the shoot is finally over, and the film will now go through several months of post-production before next year’s release. After completing the location shoot in Australia last month, Park and his stars Song Kang-Ho, Kim Ok-Bin, Shin Ha-Gyun and Kim Hae-Sook wrapped up the Korean shoot last October 9, after five intense months of… well, whatever they didn’t tell us zilch about.

So, more or less, we’re dealing with Sang-Hyeon (Song Kang-Ho), a very respected priest who furtively heads to Africa (apparently, the spot is in the middle of the desert. Yum. Visuals galore) for an interesting experiment he supports. The idea is creating a miraculous vaccine if they succeed, but after he is victim of a very dubious transfusion, things start to change a little. Like, he doesn’t enjoy liver with Chianti anymore, for instance. And his friend’s wife is starting to to make him rethink his vows, with quite the catastrophic repercussions. Meow. Song commented this “was an incredible challenge for [him] as an actor, and just getting the opportunity to do this made him happy.” Park went for his usual lovely boldness, and said “at least of the films I’ve shot, I have the feeling it might be the best.” That’s a pretty important list of contenders to deal with.

Film will be co-produced by Hollywood majors UIP and Focus Features as we previously reported, and release is set for the first half of 2009. Park recently commented he receives scripts from Hollywood at a rate of about one per week, and although he hasn’t seen anything that truly interests him so far, he might be tempted to cross over if the project is right.

[Star News] [Naver]