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Hana-Kimi School Manga Gets Live-Action Korean TV Show
posted on by Egan Loo
The major Korean production company SM Entertainment is producing a live-action television drama adaptation of Hisaya Nakajo's Hana Zakari no Kimi-tachi e (Hana-Kimi) shōjo school manga, and it is aiming to release the series this summer. SM Entertainment plans to produce a 16-episode series under the title Utsukushii Kimi e, and it is now casting the series.
The original Hana-Kimi series followed a girl named Mizuki as she disguises herself to attend the same all-boys school as her idol. Several of the dorm residential advisors, including a boy named Minami Nanba, discover Mizuki's secret but vow to keep quiet.
The manga has sold 17 million copies in Japan, and Viz Media finished publishing the 23 manga volumes in North America in 2008. Hana Zakari no Kimi-tachi e: Ikemen Paradise, a Japanese live-action television version of the manga, ran in Japan in 2007. This version starred Shun Oguri, Maki Horikita, and Toma Ikuta, and it earned an average rating of 17.04%. There was also a 2006 live-action Taiwanese television adaptation that predated the Japanese version.
