#The Grey Infiltrates Netflix This Year

Netflix’s Parasyte: The Grey, a live-action Korean adaptation of Hitoshi Iwaaki Parasyte manga, will debut sometime in the second quarter of 2024. The release window was revealed in a recent 2024 K-Content Lineup preview video, which includes a few seconds of footage from the series (skip to 1:19 to see the parasites in action).

Three stills, previewing the show’s principal characters, were also released.

Announced in August 2022, Parasyte: The Grey is helmed by Train to Busan‘s Yeon Sang-ho, who also co-wrote with Ryu Yong-Jae (Peninsula). Jeon So-nee, Koo Kyo-hwan, and Lee Jung-hyun star in the Climax Studio and Wow Point production.

In this adaptation, Jeon’s Jeong Su-in is the one who ends up co-existing with a parasite after it fails to take control of her brain. Koo plays Seol Kang-woo, a man tracking down parasites in an attempt to find his sister, while Lee plays Choi Jun-kyung, the leader of an anti-parasite task force who previously lost her husband to the aliens.

The Kodansha-published manga was serialized from 1988 to 1995 and collected into 10 tankoubon volumes. A spin-off titled Parasyte Reversi ran from 2018 to 2021 and has eight tankoubon volumes. The original series has been republished in kanzenban and Kodansha’s Platinum Comics formats.

Global Bookwalker describes manga’s premise as:

They arrive in silence and darkness. They descend from the skies. They have a hunger for human flesh. They are everywhere. They are parasites, alien creatures who must invade and take control of a human host to survive. And once they have infected their victims, they can assume any deadly form they choose: monsters with giant teeth, winged demons, creatures with blades for hands. But most have chosen to conceal their lethal purpose behind ordinary human faces. So no one knows their secret except an ordinary high school student. Shin is battling for control of his own body against an alien parasite, but can he find a way to warn humanity of the horrors to come?

A TV anime adaptation of the manga, directed by Kenichi Shimizu (All Out!) and produced by Madhouse, ran from 2014 to 2015 with 24 episodes. The manga has also inspired a two-part Japanese live action movie.