Thursday, October 10, 2013

Boys Over Flowers - U.S. Version

When Rocketman let me know about this article, I let out a loud "NOOOOOOOOO!" I know for a fact that Hollywood for some time has wanted to cash in on the popularity of Korean dramas. The reason I know this is that in 2008, I was contacted by a Hollywood screenwriter. I immediately googled him to see if he was truly who he said he was and was surprised to see how many big shows he had worked on.  I have since googled him and found out that he is now an executive producer on a major television show here is the U.S.

Hollywood want to do a U.S. version of the Korean drama "Full House." This drama was wildly popular in Korea and in many countries. My Korean girlfriends knew how much I loved it and they found out you could visit the house where the drama taped and took me to visit. It was one of my best memories of Korea and that blog post was how the screenwriter found me.

The screenwriter had watched the Korean version with subtitles and had a bunch of questions, mostly cultural. Things that didn't make sense to an American. I answered his questions and was at first excited that there would be an American version until I asked some questions of my own.

I asked him if they were going to cast Asians and preferable Korean at least for the two main characters. He told me that although he wanted to, Hollywood would not cast an Asian as a lead in a television production. Of course, I went ballistic and gave him my opinion which he wholeheartedly agreed with.

I suggested at least making the lead male role which was played by Rain (Bi) be Asian. I told him that the cultural differences would be very interesting to an American audience. I had heard that Rain was learning English at the time so I offered that maybe he could reprise his role. If not, Daniel Henney, was half-Korean and had already appeared in a wildly popular Korean drama, "My Name is Sam-Soon." He thanked me for the suggestions and again said that there was no way Hollywood would allow it. Remember, this was 5 years ago.

My last email told him to tell whoever is producing this to forget it. It would never work and would be a disaster. As far as I know, it was never made.

Here is my favorite song from Full House:

Back to the American version of "Boys Over Flowers." I'm just not sure how it will be received. I just wish U.S. television would get the guts and air the Korean version of one of these dramas with subtitles. I think it would be a huge hit but until then let's see how this goes.

Here are some of my favorite songs from "Boys Over Flowers"




1 comment:

  1. I read about this! Apparently it is already casted, and supposed to be set in college, which is necessary since none of the actors look like they are high school age. There is an Asian girl, I think she is Filipino, but she isn't the Jan-Di/Zoey character. Everything I've seen or read about it has me really disappointed. Here you can see the cast of characters minus Zoey: http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2013/09/23-1/cast-of-american-boys-over-flowers-remake-introduced

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