South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, best known for grim, brutal, darkly funny films like Oldboy, Thirst, and Stoker, has signed on for a new sci-fi project. Variety reports that he will be directing and developing Second Born, a futuristic thriller in which humans can download their consciousness onto neural microchip implants.
The ability to simply insert one’s entire self into a new body has people desiring to take over new and different forms, leading to some black market body-swapping and likely other shady activities. The script, written by David Jagernauth, has been around for a while, as it won second place in a Scriptapalooza writing competition in 2010. Indiewire’s Kevin Jagernauth (cousins with David) adds that the original plot focused on a murdered special agent who is reborn into a stranger’s body in order to hunt down a conspirator; no word on if the current version retains this plot.
Chan-wook’s last sci-fi project was the 2006 romantic comedy/drama I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK, about a young woman who checks into a mental hospital, believing that she’s a robot.
