This would certainly be a star-powered coupling: Hyun Bin (Swindlers; Hyde, Jekyll, Me) and Park Shin-hye (Doctors) are both currently in talks to star in a human melodrama from the writer of Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim, to air on SBS. The drama’s title translates literally to Fox Bride Star, although I’m not 100 percent committed to that reading; it’s a made-up term and not explained, so I’m going with literal for now.
The plot centers around a man and woman who meet in Seoul, and they heal the scars in each other’s hearts as they encounter music, food, people, and stories. That’s fairly generic-sounding, but I’m recalling how Romantic Doctor took a medical setting and filled it with quirky characters and interesting relationships, so that’s what I’m hoping for this drama, particularly if we get these two stars to come onboard. Mostly, I just want Hyun Bin to do dramas again, so we can erase the memory of the bad ones. I know he’s been doing much better in the film realm, but nobody should want Hyde, Jekyll, Me to be the last word they leave in a genre!
Hyun Bin’s potential character is a genius (sigh) advertising executive who has risen to the top, but in his life’s best moment, he suffers the worst accident. Park Shin-hye’s character is of a 27-year-old woman whose father died nine years ago while saving another person’s life, leaving her all alone in the world. She’s left to figure out how to get by in this world, made tougher when she loses both her compensation and support funding. But when she meets our hero, they start to heal each other’s pain and change for the better.
The drama reunites Hyun Bin with his Secret Garden director, PD Shin Woo-chul, who also directed A Gentleman’s Dignity and Gu Family Book in the intervening years. PD Shin has also worked with writer Kang Eun-jung before on Gu Family Book, though her two dramas since then have been much more successful (cheerful weekend family drama What’s With This Family and Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim).
Fox Bride Star is being considered for a Monday-Tuesday drama slot on SBS later this year.