WIRE BUZZ: Parasite wins big at LA Film Critics Awards; Black Widow poster & more

Bong Joon-ho may be breaking through as an A-list director for good this time. The Okja and Snowpiercer helmer just won big at the 2019 Los Angeles Film Critics Awards with Parasite, his unnerving, Korean-language social-switcheroo thriller that’s lost nothing in translation en route to an enthusiastic reception from American film reviewers.

In a relatively genre-light year at this year’s awards, the Cannes-winning Parasite took home top LAFCA honors for both Best Picture and Best Director, while also picking up a Best Supporting Actor award for Korean actor Song Kang-ho, via Deadline.

Credit Bong’s sense of rhythm and pacing as a device for building tension in his character-driven movies. It’s a method he recently told SYFY WIRE he employs in most of his films, from 2013’s Snowpiercer to this year’s Parasite. 

“From the scriptwriting stage to picture lock to sound mixing, the entire process is related to how I create my rhythm,” he explained. “… It feels as if the film [Parasite] is adding more and more characters as the narrative progresses. You end up seeing characters you never knew existed, you start seeing new sides to these characters. If Snowpiercer discovers more train cars as the film progresses, Parasite explores newer sections to these characters.”

Also taking home honors at this year’s LAFCA awards for best animated film was French-language I Lost My Body, a tale about a severed hand that escapes a Parisian laboratory to hunt down a reunion with its owner (a pizza boy). Apollo 11’s Todd Douglas Miller also nabbed the award for best editing.

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Natasha Romanova looks as all-business as ever in Marvel’s new poster for Black Widow, which just debuted at CCXP 2019, Brazil’s biggest annual comic fan con in São Paulo.

Stylized, dark, and dead serious, the up-close head shot of Scarlett Johansson’s tragically fated spy comes fresh on the heels of the new Black Widow trailer, which Marvel unveiled last week. Take a peek below:

The trailer gave us our first glimpses of Cold War characters like Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), and the Soviet Union’s anti-Captain America — David Harbour’s Red Guardian. Taking place shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow is expected to dive deeper into Natasha’s tortured backstory, even as she goes on the run from U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) for being part of the maverick group of Avengers who breached the Sokovia Accords.

Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow stealths into theaters on May 1 of next year.

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We’ve suspected for a while that the next mainline Conjuring movie would follow Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) as they investigate the real-life case files of a killer who blamed his actions on an irresistible demonic possession. Now New Line Cinema is officially on the case with the reveal of the movie’s title — The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.

The third Conjuring movie (and the seventh in the overall franchise), The Devil Made Me Do It appears set to explore the horrors the Warrens uncover as they try to unravel a fictionalized version of the case of Cheyenne Johnson, a 19-year-old Connecticut man who in 1981 was charged with killing his landlord. On trial for murder, Johnson famously cited demonic possession in his defense.

Directed by Michael Chaves and based on James Wan’s immensely successful paranormal horror-verse, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is set to creep into theaters on Sept. 11 of next year.