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Boys Over Flowers South Korean Series Gets Filipino Adaptation

Filipino media company GMA Network announced last Thursday that it will produce a Filipino adaptation of the Korean Boys Over Flowers live-action drama, itself an adaptation of Yōko Kamio's Boys Over Flowers manga.

In addition, Filipino media company ABS-CBN announced last Wednesday that it has licensed Meteor Garden, the upcoming live-action Taiwanese adaptation of the manga. The new Taiwanese adaptation stars Shen Yue, Darren Cheng, Dylan Wang, Connor Leong, and Caesar Wu, and has a reported budget of NT$720 million (US$23 million), or NT$15 million (about US$497,000) per episode

Kamio earlier denied rumors of a supposed remake of the 2005 Japanese live-action series by TBS last month.

The original Boys Over Flowers manga followed 16-year old Tsukushi Makino, a bright girl from a middle-class family who gets accepted into the ultra elite Eitoku Academy. She finds herself on the bad side of the school's F4, the four most elite male members at the school. The manga has more than 64 million copies in print.

The manga has already been adapted into Japanese anime, a 1995 Japanese live-action film, and a more well-known 2005 Japanese television drama, the latter of which spawned a sequel and a hit film. Taiwan also remade the manga into a live-action university drama titled Meteor Garden. Crunchyroll streamed a Korean live-action adaptation in 2011. A stage musical adaptation ran in Japan from January to February 2016.

Viz Media released the manga and anime versions in North America.

Since Boys Over Flowers ended in 2004, Kamio drew two side stories in 2006 and 2007. Kamio debuted the Boys Over Flowers Season 2 manga in Shueisha's Shonen Jump+ digital magazine in February 2015 and the series is ongoing. The series is titled Hana Nochi Hare ~HanaDan~ Next Season (Flowers, Then Sunny Skies ~Boys Over Flowers~ Next Season) in Japan. The story is set at Eitoku Academy two years after the legendary F4 group graduated, and follows the next generation of characters.

Viz Media is publishing the sequel manga in English as a free simultaneous digital release.

Sources: ABS-CBN (link 2), GMA News Online via Orends: Range

Thanks to Ian Pete Titular for the news tip.