YouTube and Korean production company Group Eight are forging Hallyu history with their pact to produce and launch the video-sharing website’s first global-scale, exclusive TV-style drama.
Group Eight, the company behind the smash hit series “Boys Over Flowers,” is looking to extend the life of their drama “Naughty Kiss” which is currently airing on MBC by launching a special version of it into the YouTube stratosphere.
Under the deal Group Eight will create seven, never-before-seen, 10-minute long episodes of “Naughty Kiss” exclusively for YouTube.
Since YouTube caters to a global audience, such a partnership offers a number of benefits for the production company.
Group Eight does not need to sell its series to each country’s distributors nor does the company need to vie for a highly coveted timeslot on a major broadcasting network. By airing via YouTube, they can go straight to their target audience.
“I feel like the head of a broadcasting network,” Group Eight CEO Song Byeong-joon said at a press conference on Wednesday. “It takes a load off.”
Lee Won-jin, Asia Managing Director of YouTube’s parent company Google, revealed a long-term vision toward what he considers a first step.
“We are developing a new model for distributing dramas,” Lee, also head of Google Korea, said.
An official YouTube “Naughty Kiss” channel will open in October where users can check out promotional videos, music videos, making-of-the-series clips and participate in special events. Then, between late October and early November, after MBC’s “Naughty Kiss” airs its final episode, the special series will be launched.
Group Eight’s Song said the series would not be a repeat of the MBC version, adding that unaired episodes from the original comic book series and brand new stories will be used to create the special edition.
Subtitles, said Google’s Lee, may be provided by YouTube at first and or may invite users to translate the series collectively.
Since YouTube currently has domains in 24 countries and 24 hours worth of footage is being uploaded by the minute as of March, the “Naughty Kiss” special edition may pave the way for future YouTube and other made-for-Internet dramas.
For now, however, Group Eight might just be hoping that YouTube’s “Naughty Kiss” fares better than the network version, which has been bringing in average viewer ratings of around 3 percent for its first four episodes.
MBC’s “Naughty Kiss” is a spin-off of the late Kaoru Tada’s Japanese comic book series “Itazura na Kiss,” which sold a whopping 30 million copies and was remade into both a Taiwanese and Japanese TV drama and an animated series.
“Boys Over Flowers” heartthrob and SS501 boy band leader Kim Hyun-joong is playing the lead alongside “Bad Boy” starlet Jung So-min.
By Jean Oh (oh_jean@heraldm.com)
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