‘The Remarried Empress’ Drops Early on Disney+ and Hulu as Webtoon Pushes Into Hollywood

Webtoon Entertainment surprise-dropped the first four episodes of “The Remarried Empress” on Disney+ and Hulu on Nov. 3, one day ahead of its scheduled Nov. 4 premiere. The early release caps a month of momentum for the Korean romance epic: sold-out preview screenings at the Busan International Film Festival and a trailer that passed 13 million views in its first 48 hours on YouTube and social platforms.

By Grace Kim, Arts & Voices

The move matters beyond one show. Webtoon Entertainment, which began as a digital comic and webnovel platform, is using the series to break into Hollywood after its adaptations already took off in South Korea and internationally.

What does the early drop signal?

It shows Webtoon now has leverage with global streamers. The company worked directly with Disney+ and Hulu to accelerate the launch because demand was outrunning the calendar. That’s a shift from the usual pattern, where Korean-produced adaptations simply get licensed out.

“[‘The Remarried Empress’] has almost 3 billion page views around the world,” Webtoon Entertainment president Yongsoo Kim told Variety last month at New York Comic Con. “And fans around the world can watch on Disney+ and Hulu in early November. And another thing that is exciting me is we have many video adaptations based on Korean productions and distributed globally through Netflix and Disney as global streamers — but now we are working on so many Hollywood productions on the U.S. side with all the partners making English-speaking, Hollywood-based, Webtoon-IP-based adaptations.”

What is the story about?

The series is based on the hit Naver Webtoon. It follows Empress Navier (Shin Mina) and her husband, Emperor Sovieshu (Ju Jihoon), of the Eastern Empire. Their marriage fractures when Sovieshu falls for runaway slave Rashta (Lee Seyoung) and tries to move heaven and earth to win her heart. Navier refuses to compromise her dignity. She agrees to the emperor’s request on one condition — that she may remarry rival Crown Prince Heinrey (Lee Jongsuk) of the Western Kingdom.

What’s in the Hollywood pipeline?

Plenty. The slate now includes:

• An anime adaptation of “The Remarried Empress” at Crunchyroll, which is also adapting two other popular Webtoon titles
• “Lore Olympus,” an animated series with Amazon MGM Studios for Prime Video, “coming soon”
• “The Mafia Nanny,” a live-action project in development at Hulu with Charlize Theron as executive producer
• Adaptations of “Chasing Red,” “Stagtown” and “Death of a Pop Star”

Kim frames “The Mafia Nanny” as a potential turning point. “I believe that might be an eye-opening moment for the U.S. market audience,” he said. “Oh, this is not Asian-based storytelling content; it’s more like Hollywood-based, big-movie, live-action, animation, but based on Webtoon. What is Webtoon again? I’m really excited that moment is coming.”

Does the track record support the bet?

The numbers say yes. Season two of Netflix’s “Bloodhounds” debuted in April and stayed in the streamer’s top 10 non-English-language series for two weeks. Webtoon’s recent hits also include two more Netflix projects, “Chicken Nugget” and “The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call,” plus 2025’s “My Daughter Is a Zombie” — the highest-grossing Korean film of last year and the highest-grossing comedy in the country’s history.

Over the past two years, Webtoon Entertainment has announced content deals with major publishers and creators including Disney, Paramount, IDW Publishing, Dark Horse Comics and Dropout.

Why adaptations matter to the platform

Kim is explicit about the mechanism: hits on global streamers recruit new readers who’ve never heard of the platform. “Especially the video adaptation, we’re making a very global non-English No. 1 titles from Netflix and Disney+ and keep making it, then it’s always helpful for us to reach a global audience who doesn’t know about Webtoon, who are not familiar with Webtoon but saw that this is a story from Webtoon,” he said. “What is this Webtoon? Then they can naturally come to it and that is a really important tool for us to widen our flywheel.”

In short, each screen adaptation feeds readers back to the comics. If “The Remarried Empress” performs on Disney+ and Hulu the way “Bloodhounds” did on Netflix, the English-language Hollywood slate — “Lore Olympus” and “The Mafia Nanny” first — becomes the next test of whether that flywheel spins in the U.S. market too.