Park Chan-wook is set to direct a TV adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2015 novel, The Sympathizer. Nguyen announced the news on Twitter, writing, “Thrilled to finally announce that @A24 has optioned THE SYMPATHIZER for TV, with director Park Chan-wook, whose films include THE HANDMAIDEN. His OLDBOY was a big influence on THE SYMPATHIZER, and I can’t imagine a better person to direct this TV adaptation with @rhombusmedia!†Nguyen added, “I’ll be talking to Lee Isaac Chung of MINARI for the A24 podcast and will gush more about Park Chan-wook then,†as well as, “I hope Park Chan-wook, who did wonders with the octopus in OLDBOY, will be equally imaginative with the squid in THE SYMPATHIZER …â€
The Sympathizer is a genre-bending epic that follows an unnamed Vietnamese narrator who works as a communist double agent after immigrating to the United States. The novel was the first, by Vulture’s estimation, to win both the Edgar Award and the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. Park is the visionary Korean director behind The Vengeance Trilogy as well as The Handmaiden.