Disney Sets November Premiere for Korean Fantasy-Romance 'The Remarried Empress' After Busan Film Festival Launch
Disney has set a 4 November streaming premiere for The Remarried Empress, a Korean fantasy-romance series it describes as the most expensive K-drama the company has ever produced (The Hollywood Reporter).
The 10-part series stars Shin Min-a, Ju Ji-hoon, Lee Jong-suk and Lee Se-young. It is based on a Naver Webtoon of the same name that has racked up nearly 3 billion views globally. Cho Su-won directs, with scripts by Yeoh Geena and Hyun Choong-yeol.
Before it reaches streaming, The Remarried Empress will screen at the Busan International Film Festival, which runs 6–15 October. Three episodes — running a combined 151 minutes — will get their world premiere in the festival's On Screen section, a programme introduced in 2021 to showcase high-profile new series on the big screen ahead of release.
The streaming rollout begins with four episodes on 4 November, followed by two new installments every Wednesday through the finale on 25 November.
For a webtoon with nearly 3 billion views, a screen adaptation carries a built-in audience of serious size. What is less common is a streaming platform calling a single series its most expensive production in a given market — a signal of how much Disney is willing to spend to compete in the Korean-content space, where rival platforms have invested heavily for years.
The Busan stop matters too. A festival premiere puts a television drama in front of a theatrical audience and critics before subscribers ever see it, lending the kind of prestige launch usually reserved for feature films.
The Remarried Empress joins a growing roster of Korean-language originals on Disney+. The platform has been building its K-drama library as part of a broader push into non-English-language scripted content, treating it as a single global market rather than a regional niche.
