Originally scheduled to premiere Nov. 4, Korean romance series “The Remarried Empress” surprise-dropped its first four episodes one day early on Disney+ and Hulu amid intense anticipation for the series and high hopes from producer Webtoon Entertainment.
Following sold-out preview screenings at the Busan International Film Festival and the release of the show’s trailer surpassing 13 million views in the first 48 hours on YouTube and social media platforms, Webtoon worked with Disney+ and Hulu to get “The Remarried Empress” adaptation to audiences sooner.
The splashy move comes as Webtoon Entertainment, which originated as a digital comic and webnovel platform, looks to make its big break in Hollywood after its adaptations have taken off at home in South Korea and internationally.
“[‘The Remarried Empress’] has almost 3 billion page views around the world,” Webtoon Entertainment president Yongsoo Kim told Variety last month at New York Comic Con. “And fans around the world can watch on Disney+ and Hulu in early November. And another thing that is exciting me is we have many video adaptations based on Korean productions and distributed globally through Netflix and Disney as global streamers — but now we are working on so many Hollywood productions on the U.S. side with all the partners making English-speaking, Hollywood-based, Webtoon-IP-based adaptations.”
Based on the hit Naver Webtoon, “The Remarried Empress” follows the strained relationship between beloved Empress Navier (Shin Mina) and her husband, Emperor Sovieshu (Ju Jihoon), of the Eastern Empire. With anxieties rising across the land, the couple’s relationship begins to fracture when Sovieshu falls in love with runaway slave Rashta (Lee Seyoung) and attempts to move heaven and earth to win her heart. Unwilling to compromise her dignity, Navier acquiesces to the emperor’s request on one condition — that she be allowed to remarry rival Crown Prince Heinrey (Lee Jongsuk) of the Western Kingdom.
Now, an anime adaptation of “The Remarried Empress” is set up with Crunchyroll, which is adapting two other popular Webtoon titles. And there are more partners and TV and film projects where those came from, including adaptations of Webtoon’s “Lore Olympus,” “The Mafia Nanny,” “Chasing Red,” “Stagtown” and “Death of a Pop Star.”
“‘Lore Olympus’ is being made working with Amazon MGM Studios for Prime. It’s coming soon, the animation series,” Kim says. “And then ‘The Mafia Nanny’ is in development [at Hulu] for live-action, working with Charlize Theron as an executive producer. I believe that might be an eye-opening moment for the U.S. market audience. Oh, this is not Asian-based storytelling content; it’s more like Hollywood-based, big-movie, live-action, animation, but based on Webtoon. What is Webtoon again? I’m really excited that moment is coming.”
The second season of Netflix’s “Bloodhounds” debuted in April among the streamer’s top 10 non-English-language series for two weeks. Along with that series, Webtoon’s recent hits have included two more projects with Netflix (“Chicken Nugget” and “The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call”) and 2025’s “My Daughter Is a Zombie,” which was the highest-grossing Korean film released last year and the highest-grossing comedy in the country’s history.
Over the past two years, Webtoon Entertainment has announced a series of new content deals with major publishers and creators, including Disney, Paramount, IDW Publishing, Dark Horse Comics, Dropout and more.
“Especially the video adaptation, we’re making a very global non-English No. 1 titles from Netflix and Disney+ and keep making it, then it’s always helpful for us to reach a global audience who doesn’t know about Webtoon, who are not familiar with Webtoon but saw that this is a story from Webtoon,” Kim says. “What is this Webtoon? Then they can naturally come to it and that is a really important tool for us to widen our flywheel.”
