Kogonada Set to Direct ‘Severance’ Season 3, Replacing Ben Stiller — World of Reel
Kogonada, previously recognized for his video essays and visible artwork, made his function debut with 2017’s “Columbus,” a visually beautiful two-hander that was met with widespread acclaim. His follow-up, “After Yang” — a Cannes-premiered sci-fi meditation — was additionally warmly acquired and additional cemented his repute as a filmmaker with a fragile, contemplative contact.
That momentum, nonetheless, got here crashing down final yr with “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” a $60M time-travel romance starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell. The movie was savage by critics and fizzled on the field workplace.
Kogonada rapidly regrouped, heading to Hong Kong to quietly shoot a a lot smaller mission titled “Zi.” The movie was meant as a low-budget palette cleanser after the debacle of “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.” The end result? Admirable, but additionally baffling. It premiered at Sundance to combined evaluations.
All of this has now led Kogonada towards tv. He’s been tapped to exchange Ben Stiller as the first director for season three of the acclaimed “Severance,” set to direct most, if not all, of the episodes.
The Apple TV+ sequence follows Mark S. (Adam Scott), an worker of Lumon Industries who agrees to endure a controversial “severance” process by which his work recollections are surgically separated from his private ones. What follows is an odd and unsettling exploration of id, company management, and simply how a lot of ourselves we’re prepared to give to our jobs.
Back in 2022, Stiller struck gold with the present’s first season — a dystopian, “WTF-did-I-just-watch” workplace drama with immaculate minimalist world-building. I wasn’t fairly as taken with the second season, though it nonetheless scored sturdy evaluations.
With Stiller now returning to options, Kogonada stepping in truly makes lots of sense. His minimalist, contemplative filmmaking model — constructed round exact visible composition and stillness — seems like a pure match for the eerie, managed world of “Severance.”
