South Korean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy) has been tabbed to helm Second Born, a sci-fi thriller for Rumble Films, Variety reports. Park, who made his American feature debut with 2013’s Stoker, will direct from an original screenplay by first-time writer David Jagernauth.
The film will recount a dystopian society where neural microchips are able to store a person’s consciousness, which results in people switching bodies on the black market. The script by newcomer Jagernauth has been floating around since 2010, when it won second place in the Scriptapalooza competition.
While Park has yet to take on a straightforward sci-fi feature, the film’s morbid and offbeat concept falls right in line with the director’s predilections. Park became a global name with his “Vengeance Trilogy” (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance), which dealt with the often gruesome and unglamorous side to vengefulness. Park’s Oldboy was even given the remake treatment by Spike Lee in 2013, but with little critical or commercial success.
Second Born will presumably be Park’s next feature after he finishes adapting Agashi, which is a film taken from Sarah Waters’ lesbian crime novel Fingersmith. That story, originally set in Victorian-era England, is to be adapted for 20th-Century Korea, when the country was annexed by Japan.
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