Netflix has released a teaser trailer for Okja, Bong Joon-Ho’s upcoming film about the bond between a strange, large beast and a little girl. The trailer features Tilda Swinton with two stylists attending to her crisp blonde bob and makeup, as she looks out towards the camera in a vaguely non-naturalistic daze — and indeed, this film doesn’t look too concerned with reality, for Swinton excitedly reveals that she “took nature…and science…and [she] synthesized” as the trailer cuts to images of the creation of a porcine beast on a computer screen.
From there, we get a glimpse of said beast’s seemingly lovely friendship with the story’s young protagonist, Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun), and that’s about all that’s shown here. Bong Joon-Ho pointed out in Entertainment Weekly that unlike the central beast in his famed monster movie The Host, Okja is “a very shy and introverted animal. It’s a unique animal that we’ve not seen before.” The film apparently takes Mija and Okja on an adventure from the woods of the Gangwon Province of South Korea to New York City, where the film shot on Wall Street. Similar to Snowpiercer, there’s social allegory at play here, with the director saying, “On the surface is a story about an animal, but it’s essentially a story about capitalism.” The film will be out on Netflix in June.
Per Indiewire, Okja also stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano, Lily Collins, Shirley Henderson, Devon Bostick, Byun Heebong, Daniel Henshall, Yoon Je-Moon, Choi Wooshik, and Steven Yeun.
Watch the trailer: