Disney+ has set spring launch dates for two of its anticipated Korean originals, with the romantic comedy Perfect Crown premiering April 10 and the crime thriller Gold Land debuting April 29 as the streamer continues to bulk up its Asia slate with star-driven local productions.
Perfect Crown pairs IU and Byeon Woo-seok for the first time onscreen in a royal romance set against succession politics and chaebol power struggles. Gold Land, meanwhile, is described as a dark thriller: a fugitive saga starring Park Bo-young as a young airport employee who becomes entangled in a smuggling scheme and finds herself on the run with a cache of gold bars.
Perfect Crown follows Grand Prince I-AN, a popular royal drawn into a power struggle within the palace, who enters into a marriage of convenience with Huiju, the heiress to one of Korea’s largest conglomerates. Their arrangement begins as a strategy built on mutual expedience, but gradually develops into something more complicated. IU stars as Huiju, with Byeon playing the prince. The series is directed by Park Joon-hwa and written by Yoo Jiwon.
Gold Land comes from Old Boy screenwriter Hwang Jo-Yoon, making his streaming series debut, and is directed by Kim Sung-hoon. The story centers on Heeju, a woman from a small town whose life appears to be getting on track after she begins dating a pilot and lands a respectable job at a nearby airport. Her world collapses, though, when she is pulled into a smuggling operation and winds up fleeing dangerous pursuers with a trove of gold bars. Park Bo-young stars as Heeju, while Kim Sung-cheol plays Woogy, a member of the criminal organization chasing her. The series will launch with two episodes on April 29, followed by two new episodes each Wednesday through May 27.
Taken together, the projects are part of an ongoing effort by Disney+ to expand its output of high-end originals from East Asia, as the streamer aims to grow its base with a more consistent release cadence in some of the world’s competitive premium drama markets. On Wednesday, the streamer revealed a plan to remake the hit FX series The Americans as The Koreans, a big-swing, local-language reimagining starring Lee Byung-hun and Han Ji-min.
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