How 'The Remarried Empress' Became The Most Anticipated K-Drama on Hulu
The popular webnovel gets a live-action adaptation coming to Hulu this November.
Get ready for shadowy intrigue and steamy romance, because The Remarried Empress, Hulu's newest K-Drama, is coming to Disney+ on November 4.
An adaptation of the popular Korean webtoon of the same name, The Remarried Empress has smashed records for Hulu as its trailer recently hit over 13 million views across platforms in just two days.
The series tells the story of Navier, the wife of Emperor Sovieshu of the Eastern Empire, who demands a divorce from her so that he can marry his mistress - the runaway slave girl Rashta. Surprisingly, Navier accepts the divorce, on one condition; she be allowed to marry Heinrey, the Crown Prince of the Western Kingdom and Sovieshu's rival. From her new position, Navier plots to take her throne back from the man who stole it from her.
In what looks to be a love triangle (or square?) for the ages, The Remarried Empress promises to give us everything the modern romantasy audience is looking for in a series. The team behind the K-Drama scouted over 16 castles across France, Germany, and the Czech Republic to find the right fit for the elegant, romantic, and dark tone the show serves up on a silver platter.
As if solid storytelling and production values weren't enough, the show may be hotly anticipated because it's coming out at just the right time. K-Dramas have exploded in popularity recently, and with good reason. The shows cater to female audiences in ways that many Western shows don't, and that's reflected in the makeup of the industry itself (by some estimates, over 90% of Korean screenwriters are women).
And it's not just K-Dramas that are booming. The Remarried Empress started life as a webnovel. 'What's a webnovel?' They're books released chapter-by-chapter, usually weekly or monthly, on the internet. They're popular in East Asia, where the technology that allowed for webnovels to be published was adopted early, and the paperback novel industry wasn't as much of a rival as it was in the West. They're a booming industry in East Asia, but have yet to make much traction in this hemisphere. If the current metrics are anything to go on, The Remarried Empress could be the show to change that.
The Remarried Empress will premiere worldwide with its first four episodes on November 4 on Disney+, and will release two episodes every Wednesday after until the series finale on November 25.