Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has teamed with Universal Pictures to produce a remake the 2006 Korean creature feature The Host (Gwoemul), according to Daily Variety. Fredrik Bond, who has directed commercials for Nike, Adidas and Levi’s, will make his feature film debut, working from a screenplay by Mark Poirier (Smart People).
Bong Joon-ho directed the original film, which broke box office records in its native Korea. Despite its modest budget, the movie features state-of-the-art creature animation and other effects by The Orphanage. The story involves a family that comes together to rescue a little girl from a mutant fish monster that crawls out of Korea’s Hahn River to eat folks.
The Orphanage certainly has a bid in, but there’s no word on which visual effects shop will get to animate Universal’s latest monster. Verbinski is likely to extend his working relationship with Industrial Light & Magic, which handled the lion’s share of vfx work on the Pirates films. ILM is set to create the animation for Rango, Verbinski’s first fully animated feature. Johnny Depp is on board to lend his voice to the title character in the Paramount Pictures family flick.
Verbinski set up The Host through his Universal-based Blind Wink Prods. and will produce with Vertigo’s Roy Lee and Doug Davison, along with Paul Brooks. The filmmaker is also developing an adaptation of Take-Two Interactive’s hit sci-fi/horror video game Bioshock for Universal.
