Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2013: #33. Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer

Published on January 14, 2013

Snowpiercer

Director: Bong Joon-ho
Writer(s): Joon-ho and Kelly Masterson
Producer(s): Steven Nam, Chan-wook Park, Jeong Tae-Sung
U.S. Distributor: The Weinstein Co.
Cast: Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Alison Pill, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris, Octavia Spencer, Ewen Bremner

Continuing in our exceptional year graphic novels-to-film adaptations that we’re stoked about, in comes South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho whose fascination for Snowpiercer stems from a visit at a bookstore. I’m curious to see how the South Korean filmmaker who gave The Host and more recently, the underrated Mother , can wrangle in the most stubborn of fiction subgenres – the apocalyptic film.

Gist: Based on the French graphic novel by Benjamin Legrand and Jacques Lob, Snow Piercer is set in a future where, after a failed experiment to stop global warming, an Ice Age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snow Piercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. A class system evolves on the train but a revolution brews.

Release Date: Weinsteins know that Bong Joon-ho has a great history/ties with the Cannes Film Festival, so they’ll be looking to include this there, and if they’re smart move themselves into a summer release date making it a tentpole pic just like the major studios.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).