Parasite

RComedy, Thriller, Drama

Budget$11.4M

Domestic Box Office$53.4M

Worldwide Box Office$257.6M

Synopsis

The Kims - mother and father Chung-sook and Ki-taek, and their young adult offspring, son Ki-woo and daughter Ki-jung - are a poor family living in a shabby and cramped half basement apartment in a busy lower working class commercial district of Seoul. Without even knowing it, they, especially Mr. and Mrs. Kim, literally smell of poverty. Often as a collective, they perpetrate minor scams to get by, and even when they have jobs, they do the minimum work required. Ki-woo is the one who has dreams of getting out of poverty by one day going to university. Despite not having that university education, Ki-woo is chosen by his university student friend Min, who is leaving to go to school, to take over his tutoring job to Park Da-hye, who Min plans to date once he returns to Seoul and she herself is in university. The Parks are a wealthy family who for four years have lived in their modernistic house designed by and the former residence of famed architect Namgoong. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are all about status, Mrs. Park has a flighty, simpleminded mentality and temperament, which Min tells Ki-woo to feel comfortable in lying to her about his education to get the job. In getting the job, Ki-woo further learns that Mrs. Park is looking for an art therapist for the Parks' adolescent son, Da-song, Ki-woo quickly recommending his professional art therapist friend "Jessica", really Ki-jung who he knows can pull off the scam in being the easiest liar of the four Kims. In Ki-woo also falling for Da-hye, he begins to envision himself in that house, and thus the Kims as a collective start a plan for all the Kims, like Ki-jung using assumed names, to replace existing servants in the Parks' employ in orchestrating reasons for them to be fired. The most difficult to get rid of may be Moon-gwang, the Parks' housekeeper who literally came with the house - she Namgoong's housekeeper when he lived there - and thus knows all the little nooks and crannies of it better than the Parks themselves. The question then becomes how far the Kims can take this scam in their quest to become their version of the Parks.

Production Budget Analysis

What was the production budget for Parasite?

Directed by Bong Joon Ho, with Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong leading the cast, Parasite was produced by Barunson E&A with a confirmed budget of $11,363,000, placing it in the low-budget category for comedy films.

At $11,363,000, Parasite was produced on a modest budget. Lower-budget films benefit from reduced break-even thresholds, with profitability achievable at approximately $28,407,500.

Budget Comparison — Similar Productions

• The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017): Budget $11,400,000 | Gross N/A • Bottoms (2023): Budget $11,300,000 | Gross $12,976,079 → ROI: 15% • Troll 2 (2025): Budget $11,200,000 | Gross N/A • Weathering with You (2019): Budget $11,100,000 | Gross $192,729,404 → ROI: 1636% • Tell No One (2006): Budget $11,700,000 | Gross N/A

Key Budget Allocation Categories

▸ Talent Salaries & Producing Deals Established comedic talent can command $15–20 million per film, with top-tier stars earning even more through producing credits and backend deals. Comedy ensembles multiply this cost across several well-known performers.

▸ Production & Location Filming While comedies generally avoid the VFX costs of action films, location shooting in recognizable cities or exotic locales adds meaningful production expense.

▸ Marketing & P&A (Prints & Advertising) Comedies rely heavily on marketing to build opening-weekend momentum. Studios typically spend 50–100% of the production budget on marketing, with comedy trailers and social media campaigns being particularly expensive.

Key Production Personnel

CAST: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam Key roles: Song Kang-ho as Kim Ki-taek; Lee Sun-kyun as Park Dong-ik; Cho Yeo-jeong as Yeon-kyo; Choi Woo-shik as Ki-woo

DIRECTOR: Bong Joon Ho CINEMATOGRAPHY: Hong Kyung-pyo MUSIC: Jung Jae-il EDITING: Yang Jin-mo PRODUCTION: Barunson E&A FILMED IN: South Korea

Box Office Performance

Parasite earned $53,369,749 domestically and $204,222,027 internationally, for a worldwide total of $257,591,776. International markets drove the majority of revenue (79%), indicating strong global appeal.

Break-Even Analysis

Using the industry-standard 2.5x multiplier (P&A + exhibitor shares of 40–50% + distribution fees), Parasite needed approximately $28,407,500 to break even. The film surpassed this threshold by $229,184,276.

Return on Investment (ROI)

Revenue: $257,591,776 Budget: $11,363,000 Net: $246,228,776 ROI: 2166.9%

Profitability Assessment

VERDICT: Highly Profitable

Parasite was a clear financial success, generating $257,591,776 worldwide against a $11,363,000 production budget — a 2167% ROI. After estimated marketing costs, the film still delivered substantial profit to Barunson E&A.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

The outsized success of Parasite likely influenced studio greenlight decisions for similar comedy projects.

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Development

The idea for Parasite originated in 2013. While working on Snowpiercer, Bong was encouraged by a theatre actor friend to write a play. He had been a tutor for the son of a wealthy family in Seoul in his early 20s and considered turning his experience into a stage production. The film's title, Parasite, was selected by Bong as it served a double meaning, and he had to convince the film's marketing group to use it. He said: "Because the story is about the poor family infiltrating and creeping into the rich house, it seems very obvious that Parasite refers to the poor family, and I think that's why the marketing team was a little hesitant. But if you look at it the other way, you can say that rich family, they're also parasites in terms of labor. They can't even wash dishes, they can't drive themselves, so they leech off the poor family's labor. So both are parasites."

▸ Writing

After completing Snowpiercer, Bong wrote a 15-page film treatment for the first half of Parasite, which his production assistant on Snowpiercer, Han Jin-won, turned into three different drafts of the screenplay. Bong further referenced the design of the wealthy protagonist's house in Kurosawa's 1963 film High and Low as an important visual influence, as was the incident of Christine and Léa Papin to the story—an event wherein two live-in maids murdered their employers in 1930s France. Bong had also tutored for a rich family himself. He said: "I got this feeling that I was infiltrating the private lives of complete strangers. Every week I would go into their house, and I thought how fun it would be if I could get all my friends to infiltrate the house one by one." Additionally, Moon-gwang's allergy to peaches was inspired by one of Bong's university friends having this allergy.

Darcy Paquet, an American residing in South Korea, translated the English subtitles, writing directly with Bong. Paquet rendered jjapaguri or chapaguri, a dish cooked by a character in the film, as ram-don, meaning ramen-udon. It is a mix of Chapagetti and Neoguri produced by Nongshim. On one occasion, Paquet used Oxford University as a reference instead of Seoul National University, and in another, used WhatsApp as the messaging application instead of KakaoTalk. Paquet chose Oxford over Harvard because of Bong's affinity for the United Kingdom, and because Paquet believed using Harvard would be "too obvious". Paquet wrote, "In order for humor to work, people need to understand it immediately. With an unfamiliar word, the humor is lost."

▸ Filming & Locations

Principal photography for Parasite began on 18 May 2018 and ended on 19 September. Filming took place around Seoul and in Jeonju. The director of photography was Hong Kyung-pyo, a well-known South Korean cinematographer who had worked with other well-known directors. He shot the film with the Arri Alexa 65 and used Angénieux zoom lens.

[Filming] Principal photography for Parasite began on 18 May 2018 and ended on 19 September. Filming took place around Seoul and in Jeonju. The director of photography was Hong Kyung-pyo, a well-known South Korean cinematographer who had worked with other well-known directors. He shot the film with the Arri Alexa 65 and used Angénieux zoom lens.

▸ Music & Score

The score, by South Korean composer Jung Jae-il, consisted of "minimalist piano pieces, punctuated with light percussion", setting the film's "tense atmosphere". It also had a baroque texture with excerpts from Handel's opera Rodelinda and the 1964 Italian song "In ginocchio da te" by Gianni Morandi. It was recorded mostly through computer sounds.

The soundtrack was published and released in Korea, in digital and physical formats, by Genie Music and Stone Music Entertainment on 30 May 2019. Internationally, it was released on 11 October 2019 by Milan Records. It was released in English titles, but the names and nouns are different from the English subtitles as translated by Paquet. On 14 February 2020, it was released in double-vinyl by Sacred Bones Records (a division of American film production company Neon) and Waxwork Records, in multicolour variants.

An original song, "" (), written by Bong and performed by Choi Woo-shik, who plays Ki-woo, is heard during the film's end credits. For marketing the soundtrack's international digital releases, the song was displayed in English as "Soju One Glass"; it was later changed to a grammatically correct title to be shortlisted for the Best Original Song category at the 92nd Academy Awards.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Won 4 Oscars. 309 wins & 261 nominations total

Awards Won: ★ Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay — Bong Joon-ho (92nd Academy Awards) ★ Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay — Han Jin-won (92nd Academy Awards) ★ Academy Award for Best Director — Bong Joon-ho (92nd Academy Awards) ★ Gilde Film Price ★ BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay (73rd British Academy Film Awards) ★ Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (26th Screen Actors Guild Awards) ★ Palme d'Or ★ BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language (73rd British Academy Film Awards) ★ Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film (25th Critics' Choice Awards) ★ AACTA International Award for Best Film ★ Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (92nd Academy Awards) ★ Golden Globe Award for Best Non-English Language Film (77th Golden Globe Awards) ★ Dorian Award for Film of the Year ★ Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Director — Bong Joon-ho (25th Critics' Choice Awards) ★ Academy Award for Best Picture — Bong Joon-ho (92nd Academy Awards) ★ Academy Award for Best Picture — Kwak Sin-ae (92nd Academy Awards)

Nominations: ○ BAFTA Award for Best Film (73rd British Academy Film Awards) ○ Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay (77th Golden Globe Awards) ○ International Submission to the Academy Awards ○ Academy Award for Best Film Editing (92nd Academy Awards) ○ Golden Globe Award for Best Director (77th Golden Globe Awards) ○ BAFTA Award for Best Direction (73rd British Academy Film Awards) ○ Academy Award for Best Production Design (92nd Academy Awards)

Additional Recognition: Parasite won the Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. It became the first South Korean film to do so, as well as the first film to win with a unanimous vote since Blue Is the Warmest Colour at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. At the 77th Golden Globe Awards, the film was nominated for three awards, including Best Director and Best Screenplay, and won Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first South Korean film to achieve that feat.

It became the second international film to ever be nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture since Life Is Beautiful (1997), and ultimately won the category, making it the first international film to win the prize. Parasite was also nominated for four awards at the 73rd British Academy Film Awards—Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Not in the English Language, being the first South Korean film to receive nominations other than for Best Film Not in the English Language, and went on to win Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Not in the English Language.

Parasite was submitted as the South Korean entry for Best International Feature Film for the 92nd Academy Awards, making the December shortlist. It went on to win four awards—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. Parasite became the first non-English language film in Academy Awards history to win Best Picture.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Parasite has an approval rating of based on 485 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads: "An urgent, brilliantly layered look at timely social themes, Parasite finds writer-director Bong Joon Ho in near-total command of his craft." The site ranked it fifth on their "300 Best Movies of All Time" list in 2025. On Metacritic, 56 compiled reviews from critics were identified as positive, giving the film a weighted average score of 97 out of 100. On the same site, Parasite was rated the best film of 2019 and ranked seventh among the films with the highest scores of the decade. As of 20 November 2021, it is the forty-ninth-highest-rated film of all time on the website.

Writing for The New York Times, A. O. Scott called the film "wildly entertaining", and added that it was the kind of energised film that "obliterates the tired distinctions between art films and popcorn movies". Bilge Ebiri of Vulture magazine wrote that Parasite is "a work that is itself in a state of constant, agitated transformation—a nerve-racking masterpiece whose spell lingers long after its haunting final image". In his five-star review, Dave Calhoun of Time Out praised the film's social commentary, calling the work "surprising and fully gripping from beginning to end, full of big bangs and small wonders". Varietys Jessica Kiang called the film "a wild, wild ride", writing that "Bong is back and on brilliant form, but he is unmistakably, roaringly furious, and it registers because the target is so deserving, so enormous, so 2019: Parasite is a tick fat with the bitter blood of class rage".