I’m not sure how Universal Pictures and producer Gore Verbinski were convinced Mark Poirier was the man to write an American adaptation of the Korean mutant fish hit The Host, but he has apparently got the gig. Poirier has only this year’s mediocre Smart People to his credit and it hardly screams horror.
For those not familiar, The Host is a Korean horror/thriller centering on the idea of the contaminated waters of the Han River spawning a mutant fish beast that begins eating the locals. Personally I am not a huge fan of the film and actually wrote an article headlined “So What’s the Big Deal with The Host?” I got a couple bites in the comments on that article, but no overwhelming outcry saying I was wrong. Considering the film maintains a 92% rating at RottenTomatoes I expected some kind of resistence.
The studio has attached Fredrik Bond as director. Bond is a commercial director who told Variety, “It processes a few genres together, and visually it feels close to the stuff I’ve made over the last few years in commercials, the tonality of humor and the scale.” Considering Bond has ben directing Nike, Adidas and Levi’s commercials I am not sure how exactly they compare to The Host, but good on him if he can figure it out.
Here’s a commercial by Bond that perhaps gets to the bottom of his comparison along with a look at the major attack scene from The Host. You do the comparing and see what you think.
Fredrik Bond Commercial | Attack Scene from The Host |
As of right now there is no timeline for the remake.