Whirled pieces: Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer and the components of global transmedia production

Abstract

In July 2012, Disney’s Marvel announced its production slate for Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It would consist of six movies and run through 2015. Phase 3 would include ten movies and run through 2019. In 2013 Disney promised a Star Wars movie every year. In October 2014, Warner Bros. announced a competing slate of ten DC ‘Extended Universe’ movies running through 2020. These slates and other plans – for new Disney Princess instalments and ‘live-action’ remakes of animated classics; for Universal’s classic-monster-centred ‘Dark Universe’ and for the expansion of its Fast and Furious series – are regular features of the contemporary mediascape.1 Those slates may be revised or abandoned, but they are used to generate fan interest, to mark out release dates and to provide a framework for the deployment of intellectual property assets across media and licensed products. Such enormous undertakings necessarily curtail the opportunities for creative serendipity. In response, studios turn to auteur-ish directors for both unique spins on the underlying property and to manage increasingly unwieldy character rosters (Joss Whedon). That auteury cred can be deployed from the beginning of a transmedial enterprise, as it was with Duncan Jones and the videogame adaptation Warcraft, or it can be part of a reboot strategy (Colin Trevorrow and Jurassic World; Josh Trank and Fantastic Four). When the