[HanCinema's News] "Castaway Diva" Leads Strong Year for Kakao Entertainment

Kakao Entertainment is not generally known as a brand for scripted entertainment, but the corporation is celebrating a successful year in terms of its intellectual property. Kakao Entertainment produced "Song of the Bandits" for Netflix this year as well as "The Worst of Evil" for Disney Plus. "Castaway Diva" was another noteworthy title for Kakao Entertainment, ending with fairly strong ratings of 9% in the SBS weekend timeslot.

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"Hopeless" and "Concrete Utopia" also stand out as major film productions for Kakao Entertainment, and have been lauded at various international film festivals. While Kakao Entertainment is not new to scripted productions, starting this year the company has taken a more direct role in initial planning for series and films instead of merely serving as an investor. Consequently, any of these titles have been able to obtain international distribution on major streaming platforms.

"Castaway Diva" in particular has been a major success for Kakao Entertainment. The drama depicts a girl trapped on an island who becomes determined to succeed in her dream of becoming an idol when she is finally rescued years later. In its first week on Netflix, "Castaway Diva" earned only eight million hours viewed. But in the five subsequent weeks it has earned eighty million viewed hours on top of that, the tenfold increase a testament to the drama's popularity in recommendation.

Upcoming projects include "Gyeongseong Creature" which will see the first part of the second season premiere on December 22nd. The second part will drop on Netflix this coming January 5th. "Karma" next year is also a Kakao project, based on the webtoon of the same title, with a release date next year that is as of yet unknown.

Written by William Schwartz