Disney+ is remaking The Americans eight years after the acclaimed spy thriller’s series finale.
The original FX series starred Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Nadezhda and Mikhail, two KGB agents living under the guise of a married American couple, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings. They balance their real mission alongside raising their children, Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati), both of whom were born in America. In 2018, The Americans ended after a six-season run.
Now, The Americans is being remade as The Koreans, starring Lee Byung-hun and Han Ji-min as North Korean spies posing as a married couple in 1990s South Korea. Lee and Han’s characters have been tasked with destroying South Korea from inside the country, all while seeming like normal, everyday individuals to their children, friends, and neighbors. This will lead to conflicted feelings about their true loyalties and identities, especially as a dangerous counterintelligence agent gets closer to unmasking who they really are. Lee Hee-joon has also been cast in a role that is under wraps.
Eric Schrier, president of Disney Television Studios, reveals that he was “a little hesitant” when hearing the pitch to reimagine The Americans, which will have one of the all-time largest budgets for a Disney+ Asian original series. He was previously the president of FX Entertainment and explains that “I was the guy who developed The Americans. I’m still very close with Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, the originals’ creators, so I wasn’t so sure about this idea, because it’s all very near and dear to my heart.” Eventually, he realized the potential to recontextualize the original story. Read his additional comments below:
The similarities of the two premises — North Koreans embedded in the South, instead of Russians spying in 1980s America — started to make sense to me. But it was really the passion of our Korean team that got me excited — and I could see that, because Korea is still divided, this could be a very culturally relevant story for the local audience, which is always the primary priority for our local original content.
Park Eun-kyo, whose previous credits include Bong Joon-ho’s Mother and Disney+’s Made in Korea, is writing and adapting The Koreans. Ahn Gil-ho, director of Netflix’s The Glory, is directing The Americans remake. Disney has confirmed that Park and Ahn will be the respective writer and director for all episodes, which is more typical for Korean series, as opposed to a writers’ room and numerous directors that is more common for U.S. shows.
The Koreans comes after a string of major movies and shows for Lee Byung-hun. His role as the Front Man/Hwang In-ho came to an end with Squid Game season 3, the conclusion to the hit Netflix series, in 2025. He also voiced Gwi-ma in KPop Demon Hunters, the Netflix movie that became a global sensation, and Man-su in Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, which holds a near-perfect 97% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. As noted by Carol Choi, Disney’s executive VP of content strategy and marketing in the Asia-Pacific region, “Lee Byung-hun is a big win for us. He’s personally very interested in this role, and we’re very excited about the interpretation he brings to it. It’s the type of role that will really allow him to show his stuff.” Check out her other remarks about The Koreans below:
There are a lot of geopolitical spy thriller-type stories in the market now, but what got us really excited are the couple and family dynamics, and the drama and humor involved in two spies living as husband and wife while trying to bridge the ideological divide of the two Koreas — all of which will feel very relevant for the Korean audience.
The upcoming Disney+ show is part of a larger initiative to create more local-language series in the Asia-Pacific markets of South Korea, Japan, and Australia, which Bob Iger emphasized as a priority before he ended his most recent tenure as Disney CEO. Schrier clarifies that “We’re only interested in general entertainment with these originals — adult content. Our strategy is local for local, with shows that have strong appeal to these specific regions, with our unrivaled slates from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Disney, FX, Hulu and ABC as a complement.”
For those unsure about whether to watch the Korean remake of The Americans, Schrier discloses that he spoke with Russell, Rhys, and creators Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, all of whom were supportive of the new iteration. While Weisberg and Fields gave their approval, they chose not to read any of the scripts or be actively involved with the upcoming series, although they did share that they plan to visit the sets once filming begins.
Release Date
2013 – 2018
Showrunner
Joe Weisberg
Keri Russell
Elizabeth Jennings
Matthew Rhys
Phillip Jennings