Korea’s second-highest-grossing film of all time will debut Wednesday on Coupang Play with upgraded CGI effects
The biggest Korean box office hit in years is heading to streaming.
“The King’s Warden” will begin streaming Wednesday, 76 days after its Feb. 4 theatrical opening, local distributor Showbox said Friday.
The film will be available on Coupang Play, the local streaming service operated by South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang, along with a range of domestic IPTV and video-on-demand platforms, including Apple TV, Google TV, YouTube and Wavve.
Coupang Play comes bundled with Coupang’s paid membership. Subscribers will still need to purchase the title separately at launch.
Availability on Apple TV, Google TV and YouTube outside Korea has not been confirmed.
The period drama has sold more than 16.6 million tickets as of Wednesday, according to the Korean Film Council’s box office tracker, ranking second on Korea’s all-time box office behind “The Admiral: Roaring Currents” (2014). It has grossed 156.9 billion won ($106.9 million) at the box office, the highest ever in Korea.
It is also the first local film in two years to cross 10 million ticket sales, a benchmark that has long separated hits from phenomena at the Korean box office.
Directed by Jang Hang-jun, the film reimagines the final months of Danjong, the boy king deposed by his uncle in 1453 and exiled to a mountain village in Gangwon Province, where he died at 16.
Yoo Hae-jin plays the village chief assigned to watch over him, and Park Ji-hoon, the former K-pop idol, plays the deposed king. Yoo Ji-tae, Jeon Mi-do and Kim Min round out the cast.
The streaming release will feature a reworked version of a brief sequence midway through the film featuring a tiger, which drew widespread criticism for its subpar visual effects.
Jang has acknowledged in multiple interviews that the sequence fell short of the rest of the production, citing a tight post-production schedule.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com
