After Tilda Swinton recently reaffirmed that should would be reuniting with Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-ho for his next film, a new report has confirmed just which project that is along with four new cast members who are expected to star in it. As was presumed for a while, Bong Joon-ho's next movie will be the multilingual monster movie Okja, which is expected to feature a Korean female lead and a cast of English-speaking supporting actors, whose scenes will be set in New York.
The Wrap reports that a foursome of the aforementioned English-speaking actors are in various stages of discussions to join the film, though the news comes before offers have officially been extended. The actors in question include Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Bill Nighy, and Kelly Macdonald. Swinton is currently the only actor confirmed to be on board. Very little information on the film's plot, characters, or setting has been revealed yet, but that should change relatively soon since Okja is expected to go into production in early 2016.
It sounds like Okja is following a similar casting breakdown as Bong Joon-ho's 2013 film Snowpiercer, which starred Swinton, Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Ko Ah-sung, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris, Alison Pill, and John Hurt. The lead in that well-received sci-fi flick fell to Evans, but with a Korean female character in the lead for Okja, my money's on Ko Ah-sung. She previously starred in Bong Joon-ho's acclaimed monster film, The Host, along with Song Kang-ho, who I fully expect to star in Okja as well. Another strong candidate for the part is Doona Bae, who also starred in The Host but has been a main player in the Wachowski Siblings' recent projects like Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, and Sense8.
Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, is coming off of performances in 2015 films Southpaw, Everest, and a Toronto International Film Festival screening of Demolition. Dano, who played a young Brian Wilson in this year's Beach Boys biopic Love & Mercy, stars in the upcoming film Youth, and a pair of TV mini-series: War and Peace, and Codes of Conduct.
