Netflix's 《스캔들》 Is Officially a Remake of the 2003 Film. Its Director Says He Went Back to the 1782 Novel Instead.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos published Les Liaisons dangereuses in 1782. It is a novel in letters about two aristocrats, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, who treat seduction as a game with stakes, and about the pious married woman, Madame de Tourvel, whom Valmont sets out to ruin for sport and then, fatally, loves.

Korean screens keep going back to it. In 2003, Lee Jae-yong moved the whole apparatus to the court of King Jeongjo and called it 《스캔들-조선남녀상열지사》, with Bae Yong-joon as the rake, Lee Mi-sook as the widow and Jeon Do-yeon as the virtuous woman. It sold somewhere between 3.3 and 3.5 million tickets depending on whose count you use, finished the year as the fourth-biggest Korean film, and in 2024 was placed on the Korean Film Archive's list of the hundred Korean films that matter. Hur Jin-ho made a Shanghai-set version in 2012 for a Chinese producer. MBC ran a modern-dress one in 2018.

Now Netflix. 《스캔들》 — The Scandal — releases all eight episodes at once on Friday 18 September at 17:00 KST, which is nine in the morning in London and four in the morning in New York. 손예진 is the widow, here called 조씨부인. 지창욱 is 조원. 나나 is 희연, whose full name in the script is 안희연. It is rated 19+.

Two answers to "what is this based on"

Netflix Korea's production announcement, March last year, is unambiguous: "〈스캔들(가제)〉은 2003년 영화 〈스캔들 - 조선남녀상열지사〉를 원작으로 한다." The 2003 film is the credited source. Yonhap says the same.

The director, at the press conference on 9 September, said something different:

"이번 작품은 그 영화를 다시 만드는 것에서 출발한 게 아니라 원작 소설에서 시작했다."

"This one didn't start from remaking that film. It started from the original novel."

Both are true, and the distinction matters for how you watch it. The 2003 film is the contractual ancestor: it is why the characters have the names they have, why the setting is Joseon and not Versailles, and why Netflix's international copy calls it a reimagining of Laclos. But 정지우 went back to the letters. "원작으로 돌아가 인물과 관계를 다시 쓰다 보니 굉장히 많은 부분이 달라졌다" — going back to the source and rewriting the people and the relationships between them, a great deal changed. He called the 2003 film's central idea, moving a French novel to late Joseon, "정말 놀랍고 존경스러운 아이디어" — genuinely astonishing, and deserving of respect. Then he did his own version of it.

What changed, specifically, he was willing to name: the relationship between 조씨부인 and 희연 — Merteuil and Tourvel, the schemer and the target — "이전 이야기에서는 만들어진 적 없던 이야기", a story that had never been made in any previous telling. In the novel and in the 2003 film, those two women barely share the page. Here, apparently, they do. And 한선화 plays a character who does not exist in either the book or the film, described by the director as someone "obsessed with money and power."

The structure, he said, opens and closes with pansori. He studied Joseon folk painting, 민화, with a magnifying glass for the colour design. The costumes are by the hanbok designer 차이킴 (김영진).

Three people, three ways in

손예진 was asked why. Her answer had three parts, and the first was age.

"그런 감정을 표현할 수 있는 나이가 되지 않았을까 싶었다. 인간의 욕망을 이야기하면서 욕망이 금기된 조선시대가 배경이라는 점, 오랜만에 사극을 한다는 것이 선택의 이유."

"I thought I might finally be at an age where I could express those feelings. That it's a story about human desire set in Joseon, where desire was forbidden. And that it had been a long time since I'd done a period piece — those were the reasons."

She said she had seen the 2003 film but did not rewatch it for this — "이미숙 선배님의 압도적인 카리스마가 기억에 남아 있다", what stayed with her was Lee Mi-sook's overwhelming presence — and that the series form gave every character a story the film could not: "우리는 시리즈로 풀다 보니 각 인물의 서사가 들어가 있다." The English-language press got the costume detail: 조씨부인's signature colour is light green, and as her ambition deepens, the hanbok get darker.

손예진 as 조씨부인, in the character's signature light green. 사진 제공: 넷플릭스

지창욱 as 조원. 사진 제공: 넷플릭스

지창욱 was more rueful about his character than actors usually are at these things.

"작품을 다 끝내놓고 보니 최고의 연애꾼이 맞았나라는 생각이 들었다. 혼돈 그 자체였다."

"Having finished the whole thing, I found myself wondering whether he really was the greatest seducer after all. He was chaos itself."

What 조원 feels for 희연, he said, "사랑이라고 하기에는 사실 굉장히 복잡한 감정" — far too complicated to call love — and at times "일종의 복수", a kind of revenge. Which is the novel, exactly. Valmont's tragedy is that he cannot tell the difference either.

나나 as 희연. 사진 제공: 넷플릭스

나나 is doing her first period drama. She said she had been a fan of 정지우 for a long time and came to it out of curiosity about what his version of a sageuk would be; that 안희연 was "내 안에 깊이 자리 잡고 있던 성격의 인물", a personality that had been sitting deep inside her; that the pressure of a remake is real and she turned it into conviction. Her one-line review of the show: "'스캔들'은 뜨겁다." It's hot.

On the question everybody asks about a 19+ Joseon drama, the director's answer was one line: "기대하셔도 좋을 것 같다." You may look forward to it.

The credits behind the credits

This is 정지우's second series for Netflix — 《썸바디》 in 2022 was the first — and his first period piece for the platform. The writers are 이승영, who wrote 《협상의 기술》, and 안혜송, who adapted 《썸바디》. Production is 무비락, whose head, 김재중, shares the "created by" credit with the director on Netflix's own listing. Filming ran from March to September 2025.

It is Netflix Korea's second Joseon-set title of the year, after 《동궁》 in July, and in August the platform greenlit a third, the action period film 《도차비》. Whatever else is true, the streamer has decided that Joseon sells.

What nobody can tell you yet

There are no reviews. The Korean and English coverage as of the day before release is press-conference recaps and previews; we found no critics' screening and no embargo date, which means the first honest verdicts will come after 17:00 on Friday. We will read them and add a note if they say something the previews didn't.

Update, 23 September: number one in five countries, and a Korean press that was not convinced

The verdicts are in, and they split along a line we did not predict: abroad, warm; at home, lukewarm.

The numbers first. By 21 September, three days after release, 《스캔들》 was the most-watched series on Netflix in five countries — Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong — and inside the top ten in forty, according to the FlixPatrol tallies reported by 위키트리; it had been number one in Korea since the day it dropped. That is a fast start for a Korean period piece.

The reviews. The English-language critics liked it more than the title promised. India Today's reviewer called it "beautifully mounted, intelligently performed and anchored by three actors who understand exactly how much can be said without saying it," praised 손예진 for a Lady Cho who is "never allowed to settle comfortably into either victim or manipulator," and had one complaint, which is the one you would guess: "for a show called The Scandal, one does occasionally wonder whether it could have been more scandalous."

The Korean reception, as 위키트리 summarised it on the 21st, was harder. The recurring objections were tempo — a 124-minute film stretched to eight hours of letters read in voiceover, silences and held expressions, "OTT 몰아보기 특성과는 맞지 않는 낡은 연출", the same slack pacing that was held against 정지우's 《썸바디》 — and the ghosts of 2003: 손예진 measured against 이미숙's languid command of that film and found more formal than dangerous; 지창욱 not entirely shed of the trendy-romance lead; 나나, in her first period piece, praised by some and, by others, thought physically at odds with the costume. The nudity that the 19+ rating advertised turns out to be concentrated in two episodes, the fifth and the seventh, and the series is mostly a psychological game rather than a sensual one. What everyone agreed on was the look — the hanok sets, the colour design borrowed from 김홍도 and 신사임당, the costumes — and the supporting cast: 한선화, and the newcomers 채서린, 강찬희 and 신윤하, are named in the same breath by reviewers who liked little else. 위키트리's own summary: "국내에서는 아쉽다는 반응이 많은 반면" — at home, the dominant reaction is disappointment — with the international run still to be read.

We said before release that the director had gone back to Laclos and rewritten the relationships. The first week suggests that the audiences who did not grow up with the 2003 film are the ones giving the rewrite a chance.

The 2003 film is on the same shelf as the other Joseon things we have written about — and, for the record, 이재용, who made it, has not been quoted anywhere we can find on what he thinks of this one.

Images. 사진 제공: 넷플릭스. All the photographs are official stills from the series (Jun Hea-sun/Netflix, © 2026 Netflix, Inc.), supplied on 18 September by the series' publicists at our request, on two conditions we are glad to meet: that Netflix be credited, and that the stills be used whole, as supplied, with no cropping or cut-outs. That is why the pictures at the top of this page sit inside their frame rather than filling it — the frame is ours, the photograph is complete. The lead still shows 나나's 희연 and 손예진's 조씨부인 together, the two characters whose relationship the director says no previous telling had made. The stills replace the three images this piece ran with on its first day — a 2026 press-conference photograph of 지창욱, a 2018 one of 손예진, and a cover we built around the printer's ornament from the 1782 first edition — which were the best licence-clean pictures available before the publicists answered, and from which 나나 was missing entirely.

Sources. Release date, episode count, writers, producers and the credited source are from Netflix Korea's production announcement of 26 March 2025 and its newsroom posts of 25 August and 8 September 2026; the 17:00 KST time from Netflix Korea's own social posts. The press conference of 9 September at the JW Marriott Dongdaemun is quoted from 뉴스핌, TV리포트, JTBC, 오마이스타, 스포츠동아 and the Korea Times; 정지우's line about the modern self from 머니투데이 of 25 August. The 2003 film's credits and awards are from the Korean Movie Database and the Korean Film Archive's 2024 list; its admissions from Netflix's own release (3.52 million) and the Korean Film Council figures reproduced at koreanfilm.org (3.35 million nationwide), which disagree, hence the range. The character mapping to Laclos is from JTBC's press-conference report and the English-language record of the 2003 film. The 2018 MBC series 《위대한 유혹자》 and the 2012 film are from their Korean and English Wikipedia entries, the latter of which lists the 2012 film as a Chinese production.

Stated rather than smoothed. Several things being repeated about this series are not right. It is not "Korea's third adaptation" of Laclos: the count that produces "three" skips the 2018 MBC series and claims the 2012 film, which was a Chinese production with a Korean director. We say it is the second set in Joseon. The line that this is 손예진's "first sageuk in 24 years, since 《취화선》" is the marketing framing and does not survive her filmography — SBS's 《대망》 aired after 《취화선》, and 《해적》 (2014) and 《덕혜옹주》 (2016) are both period films — so we have used her own words, "오랜만에", a long time, and left it there. One outlet called this the director's first series; Netflix says it is his second. And we have written "roughly 3.3 to 3.5 million" for the 2003 film because the two official-looking numbers do not agree and we cannot tell you which is right.