Three Korean drama series to screen at Cannes International Series Festival in April

Three Korean drama series — “Work Later, Drink Now,” “Monstrous” and “Damn Good Company” -- will be screened at the Cannes International Series Festival Season 5’s non-competition section of South Korea fiction on April 6.

Established in 2018, the Cannes International Series Festival is an event that aims to highlight drama series from all over the world and to give them an international voice. The festival will be held from April 1 to 6 in Cannes, France this year.

First released on local streaming service platform Tving in October last year, the 12-part hit series “Work Later, Drink Now” features the story of three single women in their 30s. They have different jobs and lives, but they are best friends who gather every night to share their life stories over drinks.

The show stars young Korean female actors Lee Sun-bin, Han Sun-hwa and Jung Eun-ji.

As a result of the show’s popularity, the sequel of “Work Later, Drink Now” will be released later this year.

“Monstrous” is one of Tving’s most anticipated works this year, set to be released in April.

Director Yeon Sang-ho, the mastermind behind many hit films and television dramas including “Train to Busan” (2016), “Peninsula” (2020) and Netflix’s “Hellbound” (2021) joined this project as a screenwriter. The new series is also getting attention for featuring star Korean rookie actors Koo Kyo-hwan and Shin Hyun-bin.

In the six-part series “Monstrous,” an ancient Buddha statue, ‘Gwibul (the haunted Buddha statue)’, is discovered in a small village. At first, people are just excited, unaware of the calamity it would bring. After the statue comes out into the world, black rain and hail in the shape of a human face begin to attack the village, and the residents are deceived by an evil spirit. An archeologist named Ki-hun struggles to save the village.

“Damn Good Company” started as a web drama project of Korean YouTuber Pani Bottle, also known as Park Jae-han. The show immediately went viral after the first episode of the series was released on YouTube, reaching more than 3 million views.

Seeing the show’s success, local streaming service startup Watcha invested in it. In March, Watcha began releasing an extended version of the drama.

Most recently, Watcha released the fifth season of “Damn Good Company.”

The drama series takes place at a small company called JS Network and shows the harsh reality of Korean office workers in great detail.

Watcha CEO Park Tae-hoon, co-directors Seo Joo-wan and Park Jae-han and some of the actors from the show will participate in the festival in France in person.

According to Watcha, CEO Park will also take part in the content market event MIPTV, which takes place in parallel with the Cannes International Series Festival. He is scheduled to give a speech about Korean content.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)