Netflix Greenlights Korean Thriller ‘The Rat' and Rom-Com ‘Lovestuck'
Netflix is producing two new Korean original series – a thriller titled 'The Rat' (working title) and a romantic comedy called 'Lovestuck.'
'The Rat' has confirmed the casting of Ryu Jun-yeol and Sul Kyung-gu in what will be their first collaboration together. Based on the Kakao Entertainment webtoon 'Field Mouse' by Ludovico, the series draws inspiration from an old Korean folktale where a rat transforms into a human by consuming clipped fingernails.
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Ryu Jun-yeol ('Revelations,' 'The 8 Show') will play Moon-jae, a sociophobic novelist living a reclusive life. His character's world is turned upside down when he discovers his fingerprint no longer unlocks his phone and his only friend goes missing. Stripped of his identity and finances, Moon-jae learns that a mysterious entity known as 'the Rat' has stolen everything from him, setting him on a quest to reclaim his life.
Sul Kyung-gu ('The Whirlwind,' 'Kill Boksoon') takes on the role of No-ja, a loan shark who operates a private detective agency. Having once pursued Moon-jae for an unpaid debt, No-ja is surprised when the novelist reappears after three years seeking help to track down 'the Rat.' Though initially focused on recovering his money, No-ja soon finds himself caught up in the hunt.
The thriller will be directed by Kim Hong-sun, known for genre shows like 'Dear Hongrang,' 'Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area,' 'The Guest,' 'L.U.C.A.: The Beginning,' and 'Voice.' Lee Jae-gon, who penned 'Special Affairs Team TEN' and 'A Model Family,' will write the script. The series is produced by Kakao Entertainment, CJES Studio, and H.House.
In a separate announcement, Netflix revealed that production has begun on 'Lovestuck,' a romantic comedy that brings together director Kim Jang-han ('Do You Like Brahms?,' 'My Demon') and writer Mo Ji-hye ('You Raise Me Up') after a four-year hiatus. The series stars Jung Hae-in ('Something in the Rain,' 'One Spring Night,' 'Mom's Friend's Son') and Ha-young ('The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call').
Ha-young portrays Go Eun-sae, an ambitious prosecutor known for being quick, clean, and clever who loses her memory while tracking a crime syndicate. Jung Hae-in plays Jang Tae-ha, a former youth boxing champion turned gang member seeking redemption as a small-town boxing coach. On his final mission, he crosses paths with Eun-sae, his long-lost first love who no longer remembers him. To protect her, he creates a lie that could change both their lives.
'Lovestuck' is produced by Studio S and distributed by Netflix.
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Los Angeles Times
35 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
There's more to Korean music than K-Pop. Young composers show how in L.A. Phil's Seoul Festival
K-pop. Oscar-celebrated cinema. Samsung in the living room. Political urgency in the press. However prominent Korean culture seems to be, there is surprising lack of coverage of the classical scene at large. Already at 21, Yunchan Lim, winner of the 2018 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, has reached superstar status. Myung-Whun Chung, whose conducting career began as an assistant to Carlo Maria Giulini at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1977, was just selected, over a veteran Italian conductor, to head La Scala in Milan with the blessing of Italy's nationalist president, Giorgia Meloni. And now the L.A. Phil has turned to the South Korean capital for an eight-day Seoul Festival as a follow-up to its revelatory Reykjavik and Mexico City festivals. Unsuk Chin, today's best-known Korean composer, is the curator. She is, in fact, today's only Korean composer who's well known internationally. Despite a seeming wealth of renowned performers, Korea remains a musically mysterious land. Most of what happens, even now, in Seoul's classical music scene doesn't roam far from Seoul. The mostly youngish composers and performers in the first L.A. Phil festival event, an exceptional Green Umbrella concert of new music at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, were all discoveries. Korean music is a discovery for much of the world. But California does have a head start. Chin, whose music has a visceral immediacy, has long fit in to L.A., championed by Kent Nagano at Los Angeles Opera and by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel and Susanna Mälkki at the L.A. Phil. Moreover, ancient Korean court music and its instruments became an obsession with the echt-California composer Lou Harrison. Its noble gentility has been subtly adding to the DNA of the California sound. Only two Korean composers before Chin have made an indelible impression on the world stage, and both, as is Chin, became avant-gardist emigres. As outsiders, they have striking relevance. Isang Yun ((1917–1995) had a shocking career. A brilliant pioneering composer who melded traditional Asian music with contemporary techniques, Yun had been briefly arrested for his participation in the Korean independence movement of the early 1940s. He fled to West Germany, where he became a prominent composer before being kidnapped and returned to Korea. Imprisoned, tortured and threatened with a death sentence, he was eventually freed thanks to pressure from a consortium of internationally influential musicians (Igor Stravinsky, György Ligeti and Herbert von Karajan among them) and returned to West Berlin. And then there was Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Though famed for having been the first major video artist, Paik was a classically trained pianist and composer who began his career following in Schoenberg's footsteps by writing 12-tone music. His route to video was an erratic one that began when he fell under the spell of John Cage and became one of the more outrageous members of the anarchic Fluxus art and performance movement. I once asked Paik, who taught briefly at CalArts when it opened, about whether he always considered himself a composer. He said only a yuppie — 'you know, those people who work in a bank during the day and only go to concerts at night' — would think he wasn't. The Yun and Paik zeitgeist of going your own original and expressive sonic way while always being aware of tradition, whether embraced or rejected, pervades Chin, 63, and the generation of Korean composers who came after her and whom she has invited to the festival. Chin herself left Seoul to study with Ligeti in Europe. The Hungarian composer's music, thanks to Salonen's advocacy, is also in the L.A. blood. The orchestra has, of course, had a Ligeti festival. For the Green Umbrella concert, Chin revealed a great range of approaches among the four exceedingly interesting next-generation composers. She also invited a dazzling array of soloists specializing in Western and Korean instruments as well as the magnificent Ensemble TIMF, which joined the L.A. Phil New Music Group. All were making debuts alongside the luminous and poetic young conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi. In the four pieces (each about 15 minutes), Korean, European and American traditions can serve as sources for reinvention. Juri Seo's Concertino for Piano and Chamber Orchestra, given a dashing performance by pianist HieYon Choi, consists of short movements that include a jazz fughetta and Schumann-esque romanticism. Sun-Young Pahg's austerely formal 'L'autre moitié de Silence' for daegeum and ensemble featured Hong Yoo as soloist bending notes and bending time on the bamboo flute used in Korean folk and traditional music. In Yie-Eun Chun's spritely Violin Concerto, which was commissioned by the L.A. Phil for the festival, scale-like passages got the Paganini treatment from soloist SooBeen Lee. Dongjin Bae's 'reflective — silky and rough' for standard western flute and spacey strings, another L.A. Phil commission, had an ancient feel with its silences and breathy solos played with enthralling focus by Yubeen Kim. Chin's 'Gougalon (Scenes From a Street Theater),' which ended the program, is a riotous evocation of Hong Kong. Rather than musically reproduce street sounds and people sounds, Chin transforms them into spectacular orchestral chatter. The effect is what their joy must sound like, what their meals must sound like, what their walking and talking and laughing and crying must sound like in a language you don't understand because exhilaration isn't language. All of this is music by distinct personalities, each striving for something sonically personal. Musically mixing East and West dispenses with regulations when crossing borders and becomes an an act of individuality and often resistance. Chun's do-re-me scales become cockeyed before you grasp what's happening. Bae's silky flute, when rough underneath, evoke the feeling you might get when taking a break from Bach an instant before the world's most compelling composer overtakes your own senses. The conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi favors transparency and sensuality at the same time with expressive gestures that seem to magically mold sound. Each piece had different instrumental combinations involving both L.A. Phil and TIMF players. Everything worked. 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Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
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