Move over Squid Game, there’s a new Korean big-hitter that’s absolutely slaying everything in its path – and its name is Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area.
The series dropped last Friday and took just three days to claim the top spot in Netflix ’s global non-English viewing chart.
Racking up a staggering 33.7 millions hours of viewing during that time, the series also rocketed to number one in South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Money Heist: Korea joins other successful Korean series in claiming the top spot for Netflix, including ‘All Of Us Are Dead’, ‘Juvenile Justice’ and ‘Business Proposal’.
The show follows in the wake from trailblazing hit Squid Game, which paved the way for Korean content to reach previously unheard of levels of success across the globe.
Money Heist: Korea is a remake of major international hit La Casa de Papel (aka Money Heist), which involves a team of thieves breaking into a Spanish banknote printing facility, guided by an off-site mysterious colleague.
The new Korean version, which really pops and fizzes with an effortlessly distant cool, follows eight thieves staging a daring heist at a mint, thrillingly situated in the newly unified zone between North and South Korea.
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“As a big fan of the original Spanish series, I felt intrigued to tell this vibrant story in a Korean context,” writer Ryu Yong-jae told Variety.
The show’s creators worked doggedly with Netflix to ensure the remake felt as authentic to Korea as possible. The highly visual storytelling is injected with many little nuances that make all the difference, such as traditional Korean face masks.
“We were very lucky when we received this pitch from Ryu and the producing team, which felt like the right framework for a remake that would be respectful to the original while bringing something new that fans in Korea and globally would appreciate,” said Keo Lee, director of content, Netflix Korea.
Money Heist: Korea has achieved a healthy 83 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes among critics, but scores a bafflingly lower 49 per cent with audiences. This disparity can be a little confusing, but Rotten Tomatoes says this can happen when fewer than 60 per cent of users give a movie or TV show a star rating of 3.5 or higher.
The show also has a very poor 5.1 rating on IMDB, with one user saying: "After 15 minutes you find out it's only a copy paste from the original show. Very disappointing".
Indeed, with it being a remake of a highly successful show, Money Heist: Korea is perhaps forever destined to live in its shadow.
This view is shared by one Rotten Tomatoes viewer, Changsik J, who posted: “Being remade means that a great original already exists. No matter how good a remake is, it can only be compared to the original, and it is easy to get bad reviews. Those who have already seen the Spanish version know the story. So it might be less fun. The main plot is based on a Spanish original. But it’s good because the details are Korean.”
Vanity Fair said: “The end result is a series that’s perhaps best suited for either ‘Money Heist’ superfans or those entirely new to the franchise. Still, ‘Money Heist: Korea’ proves to be a compelling watch based on its updated geopolitical context”.
The series director Kim Hong-sun told the Korean Times newspaper this week: “We tried to take in the strong elements that the original work had and thought it would be interesting to add our own story to it. So, I think it’s natural that we are getting such varied reviews”.
