Aside from those who imported DVD versions from elsewhere in the world, most have not seen The Host director Bong Joon Ho’s most recent film in the UK. But there’s a chance the UK could see one version of the story, as writer/producer Josh Friedman is working on a TV adaptation of Snowpiercer{
The film, which starred Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell and Octavia Spencer, marked the director’s first English language film and charted a world where the planet had been plunged into a new ice age following an attempt to fix climate change. The surviving population is crammed onto a massive train that travels around the globe and is run on a strict social class system. The story itself was adapted from French graphic novel Le Transperceneige.
Tomorrow Studios producers Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements are behind the TV version, and have hired Friedman to develop the idea and write the pilot, which is yet to find a broadcast home, though Friedman has said it won’t be on US network television. "I couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity," Friedman says in a statement carried by The Hollywood Reporter. "Marty and Becky are the perfect partners to help me bring this world to TV. I’m a huge fan of director Bong’s films, especially Snowpiercer. It’s great the way the best sci-fi is great — thoughtful, political, funny, scary and sly. And it’s on a train. A big f—ing train. What more could you want?" And maybe, just maybe, a successful TV show could lead to a proper, long-deserved UK cinema release for the movie.
Aside from his long list of TV credits (which include The Sarah Connor Chronicles, based on the Terminator movies which proves he knows how to adapt a big science fiction film in an interesting way), Friedman has been working with James Cameron as part of the team on the Avatar sequels.