South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook returned to theaters last year with “Decision To Leave.” And by all accounts, it’s another masterwork from him, and one of the best films of 2022. Now Park returns to TV for the first time since 2018’s “The Little Drummer Girl” with “The Sympathizer,” set for an exclusive release on Max in 2024.
Based on Vieth Thanh Nguyen‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel of the same name, “The Sympathizer” follows a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy in the last days of the Vietnam War and his subsequent exile to the United States. Expect this series to blend several genres like its source material, which is at once an espionage thriller, a cultural satire, a dark comedy, a metafiction, and, most of all, a mystery.
“The Sympathizer” boasts an impressive cast, too. Robert Downey Jr. plays multiple antagonistic roles in the series on top of being one of the show’s executive producers. The rest of the cast includes Hoa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le, Ky Duyen, and Sandra Oh.
Park serves as co-showrunner on “The Sympathizer” with A24‘s Don McKellar. He also co-adapts Nguyen’s novel with McKellar, and directs the first three episodes. Directors for the rest of the series include Fernando Meirelles and Marc Munden. Additional writers on the series include Mark Richard, Naomi Iizuka, Meagan Houang, Tea Ho, and Anchuli Felicia King.
Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Amanda Burrell serve as executive producers through Team Downey. Other executive producers include Kim Ly and Niv Fichman for Rhombus Media, Nguyen, and Ron Schmidt. Cinetic Media and Moho Film produce along with HBO, A24, and Rhombus Media.
There’s no official release date for “The Sympathizer” yet, but expect it to premiere on HBO and Max in 2024. Watch the teaser for the series below.
