“Pigs deserve happy dreams, just like the rest of us.” That’s the message imparted by Lucy Mirando, aka Tilda Swinton, in a new viral video for Bong Joon-ho’s Okja. The highly-anticipated new film from the Snowpiercer director will drop on Netflix in June, featuring a cast that includes, in addition to Swinton, Ahn Seo-hyun, Jake Gyllenhaal, Giancarlo Esposito, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, Lily Collins, Devon Bostick, Byun Hee-bong, and Shirley Henderson. Ahn Seo-hyun plays Mija, a young girl from South Korea who has devoted her life to caring for a giant animal named Okja. Unfortunately, the multi-national Mirando Corporation, lead by Swinton’s Lucy Mirando, wants to sweep in and steal Okja for their own nefarious purposes.
In this delightfully bizarre, falsely chipper viral ad, Swinton’s pink-haired Lucy Mirando describes with wide-eyed glee the various products and activities her company is engaged in, from organic harvesting and Peachy Delight ™ baking goods and Happy Pup ™ treats, before segueing into the secretive, behind-the-scenes research they conduct into animal wellness. While the pigs at Mirando Corporation are blessed with happy dreams, it seems other pigs suffer from terrible night terrors — night terrors the Mirando Corporation was thoughtful enough to recreate here.
Speaking with Cahiers du cinéma, director Bong Joon-ho mentioned that Okja’s influences included “pig movies,” specifically the 1995 talking-pig movie Babe. As for the Okja the animal, Bong says he had a vision of a “a strange, very big animal in the middle of the road” while driving his car one day — something like a cross between a pig, a hippopotamus and a manatee. We’ll have to wait for a more conventional trailer to get a better glimpse of Okja, but for now we have this charming, creepy viral video to tide us over.
Ojka arrives on Netflix on June 28.