OLD BOY director Park Chan-wook starts next film project THE AXE

Park Chan-wook has started his next film project, which he plans to direct in South Korea. The project will be an adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel Leaves.

It is a dark comedy thriller that follows a chemist who loses his job due to outsourcing. A couple of years later, still without a job, he finds a solution to his problem by eliminating the competition.

The novel’s description reads: “Burke Devore is a middle-aged manager at a paper company when the cost-cutting ax falls and he is fired.”

“Eighteen months later, still unemployed, he puts a new twist on his job search: with agonizing care, Devore finds the seven men in the surrounding area who might take the job that rightly should be his, and systematically murders them. Transforming from mild-mannered mid-level manager to ruthless assassin, he discovers abilities he never knew he had—and that come to him all too easily.

It seems like the kind of story Park would enjoy diving into. The story was actually adapted before in 2005, but I think Park will do a great job telling this story.

This has also been reported Lee Byung-hunwho worked with Park in the 2000s Joint Security AreaAND Son Ye-jinare attached to the project and will be filmed later this year.

Park’s most recent project is a series with which he made Robert Downey Junior. titled The sympathizerwhich is an adaptation of By Viet Thanh Nguyen acclaimed novel.