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Boys Over Flowers Manga Gets Live-Action Thai TV Series Next Summer
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Thai television production company GMMTV announced in September that it will produce a new live-action series adaptation of Yōko Kamio's Boys Over Flowers manga, titled F4 Thailand/Boys Over Flowers. The production will begin filming in November, and will premiere in Thailand next summer. O Patha Thongpan is directing the 16-episode series.
[The video above is viewable worldwide except in Thailand.]
The series will star actors Vachirawit "Bright" Chivaaree (center left in image above) as Thyme, Metawin "Win" Opas-iamkajorn (leftmost) as Kavin, Nani Hirunkit Changkham (rightmost) as MJ, and Dew Jirawat Sutivanisak (center right) as Ren, and actress Tu Tontawan Tantivejakul (center) as Gorya. Bright and Win previously starred in the Thai series 2gether, for which the duo earned the fan nickname "Brightwin."
The 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 was adapted into a 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 Filipino adaptation was announced in November 2017, but it has not yet been released. Most recently, Hunan Television produced a Chinese live-action series adaptation in 2018.
The manga also inspired a stage musical adaptation ran in Japan from January to February 2016. The all-female Takarazuka Revue adapted the manga into a new musical that ran in June-July last year.
Kamio's Boys Over Flowers Season 2 (Hana Nochi Hare ~HanaDan~ Next Season) sequel manga debuted in Japan on Shueisha's Shonen Jump+ website and app in February 2015, and ended last December. Viz Media published the manga as a free simultaneous digital release. The manga inspired a Japanese live-action television series that premiered in April 2018.
Update: Added director and episode count. Source: Comic Natalie
Sources: The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web GMMTV's Twitter account
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