Bong Joon-ho's social satire has overtaken The Passion of the Christ after grossing more than £11 million at the UK box office
Over the last few weeks it's been impossible to pop to the shops or do any work or basically exist without hearing somebody mention the South Korean masterpiece that is Parasite. The film, which was written and directed by Bong Joon-ho, won Best Picture at this year's Academy Award ceremony and has since gone on to become a cultural phenomenon of the highest order.
Now Parasite, which has already done unexpectedly brilliant business at the box office the world over with a total gross of $257 million, just became the highest-grossing foreign film in UK box office history. Bong's delicious social satire has taken over £11 million at the box office to date, which was confirmed today by its UK distributor, Curzon, in a tweet. The record was previously held by Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ for a whopping length of 15 years.
It's hard not to grin wildly hearing this news. Not only is it a more than deserved achievement for Bong and his team, but it's a signal that there is an appetite for foreign films on a massive scale. All it takes is a distributor brave enough to put the film in cinemas.
Parasite's theatrical success both here and abroad is unlikely to end here, too. If you're dying to see the film again, a special “Black and White Edition” will be heading into theatres on April 3rd, not unlike what happened with George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road. So, yeah: it's Bong's world now, and we just happen to live in it.
