Eric Schrier, president of Disney Television Studios, admits he was “a little hesitant” when he first heard the pitch to remake the hit FX series The Americans as The Koreans — a big-budget, local-language reimagining starring Lee Byung-hun and Han Ji-min as a pair of North Korean spies masquerading as a happily married couple in 1990s South Korea.
“I was the guy who developed The Americans,” says Schrier, who, before taking the top global TV job at Disney, served as president of FX Entertainment. “I’m still very close with Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, the originals’ creators, so I wasn’t so sure about this idea, because it’s all very near and dear to my heart.”
Schrier says he was eventually won over when he realized the unique storytelling potential that transposing The Americans’ premise to a Korean context might present. The idea to remake the show had come organically from Disney’s content relationships in Korea, rather than any top-down corporate mandate to exploit legacy IP from the studio’s libraries. It will be the company’s first local-language adaptation of one of its hit scripted series. It will boast one of the largest budgets for Disney+’s Asian originals to date.
“The similarities of the two premises — North Koreans embedded in the South, instead of Russians spying in 1980s America — started to make sense to me,” Schrier says. “But it was really the passion of our Korean team that got me excited — and I could see that, because Korea is still divided, this could be a very culturally relevant story for the local audience, which is always the primary priority for our local original content.”
Created by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg and showrun by Weisberg and Joel Fields, The Americans starred Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two KGB officers posing as a married couple in suburban Washington, D.C., during the Reagan-era Cold War. Across six seasons, the series wove espionage tradecraft into a richly layered marital drama, charting its protagonists’ deepening ambivalence about their mission — and each other — as their American-raised children grew old enough to start asking difficult questions. The show was nominated for 18 Primetime Emmy Awards and won four over its six-season run from 2013 to 2018. It regularly ranks high on critics’ lists of the best series of the platinum TV era.
Set during the wave of democratization and cultural modernization that swept across South Korea in the early 1990s, The Koreans will follow a middle-class family hiding a parallel treasonous secret. While seemingly ordinary citizens in the eyes of their friends, neighbors and even their children, both parents — played by Lee Byung-hun and Han Ji-min — are actually elite North Korean spies working to bring down the South from within. Highlighting the stark differences between the two formerly united countries, the series will again follow the spies as they wrestle with conflicting feelings of patriotism, loyalty, identity and love, while a ruthless Korean counterintelligence agent draws ever closer to discovering their identities.
Written and adapted by Park Eun-kyo (co-writer of Bong Joon-ho’s Mother, Disney+ series Made in Korea), The Koreans is helmed by Ahn Gil-ho, the director behind the hit Netflix psychological thriller The Glory. The adaptation will be made in the typical Korean style, Disney says, employing the same writer and director for every episode, rather than the writers’ room and revolving guest director system typical of U.S. shows.
Korean star Lee Hee-joon (1987: When the Day Comes, Handsome Guys) has also been cast in an undisclosed lead role.
Carol Choi, Disney’s executive vp of content strategy and marketing in the Asia-Pacific region, posits two features of the show that have her local originals team bullish on The Koreans’ potential in both Korea and the surrounding Asian markets where Disney+ is seeking to grow: the story’s rich family dynamics and the presence of Lee Byung-hun in the lead.
“There are a lot of geopolitical spy thriller-type stories in the market now, but what got us really excited are the couple and family dynamics, and the drama and humor involved in two spies living as husband and wife while trying to bridge the ideological divide of the two Koreas — all of which will feel very relevant for the Korean audience,” Choi explains.
“And obviously, Lee Byung-hun is a big win for us,” she adds.
One of Korea’s most recognizable stars, Lee made his breakthrough in Park Chan-wook’s DMZ-set thriller Joint Security Area (2000), South Korea’s first major film to portray characters from North Korea in a sympathetic light. He later gained greater worldwide recognition as the enigmatic villain of Squid Game, and most recently turned in an irresistibly deft performance as a family man harboring dark secrets in last year’s acclaimed tragicomedy No Other Choice.
“He’s personally very interested in this role and we’re very excited about the interpretation he brings to it,” Choi adds. “It’s the type of role that will really allow him to show his stuff.”
Schrier says The Koreans is part of a planned acceleration of local-language content production in the key Asia-Pacific markets of South Korea, Japan and Australia, with more titles in development — which is all part of a strategy, laid out by Bob Iger before he exited the top job, to bolster the competitive position of Disney+.
“We’re only interested in general entertainment with these originals — adult content,” he explains. “Our strategy is local for local, with shows that have strong appeal to these specific regions, with our unrivalled slates from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Disney, FX, Hulu and ABC as a complement.”
Schrier says he spoke with The Americans’ stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, as well as the creators Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, about the Korean remake plans, and all of them gave their blessing and support.
“Joe and Joel were very curious, but chose not to be involved — for emotional reasons, I think,” he says. “They declined to read the scripts, but they said they want to visit the sets.”
He adds: “They’re fun, curious guys — I suspect they just want to get to Korea for the first time to check out the culture and eat some Korean food.”
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