“Mickey 17” is coming home.
Bong Joon-ho’s big budget follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Parasite” debuts on Max (soon to be HBO Max) on Friday, May 23. The film, which stars Robert Pattinson as a man who agrees to be cloned for an expedition on a hostile alien world, will make its linear premiere the next day at 7:40 p.m. ET on Saturday, May 24.
The film, which opened theatrically earlier this spring, was based on the novel “Mickey 7” by Edward Ashton. Pattinson plays Mickey, who agrees to be an “expendable” – someone who volunteers for particularly dangerous missions and is then replicated when he dies (the main character in the movie is the seventeenth iteration). The movie also stars Naomi Ackie as Mickey’s love interest and Steven Yeun as Mickey’s BFF/failed business partner, with Mark Ruffalo as a Trump-style politician leading the expedition and Toni Collette as his sauce-obsessed wife.
When the film was initially released, it was hailed for its creativity and for Bong’s choice to fully embrace the blank check that he was given following the release of “Parasite,” with many of his favorite themes being reworked and remixed on an even bigger scale — the evils of capitalism, the importance of animal rights, the underlying question of what makes us human.
“Mickey 17” comes to Max on Friday, May 23.
