Lee Jong-hyuk headlines next tvN Flower Boy series

92 April 3, 2013May 27, 2013

by girlfriday

First of all, there’s a new Flower Boy drama on the way. Rejoice! And… Lee Jong-hyuk is headlining? Now, I LOVE me some Lee Jong-hyuk, but don’tcha think he’s more flower ajusshi than boy? The fourth installment of the Oh Boy series for cable network tvN will be Cyrano Dating Agency — and yes, it’s the same agency that Uhm Tae-woong once ran in the movies. He’ll be playing that same character, and is probably a better fit for the smooth-talking puppetmaster of romance, though of course he becomes his own worst enemy when it comes to his own love life. If this is the result of Lee Jong-hyuk dropping I Summon You, Gold, then I think that makes him the winner. Also me.

The movie starred Uhm Tae-woong as the leader of an unusual dating agency that was less about finding you a match and more about inventing scenarios wherein a bumbling fool (Daniel Choi) could look really cool in front of the girl of his dreams (Lee Min-jung). But in true Cyrano de Bergerac fashion, it was the man behind the romance/poetry/wind machines who really loved the girl, and he had to wrestle with helping another man win over the love of his life.

The drama will be based on a webtoon that’s the prequel to the movie, so basically we’re backing up to get the origin story of the dating agency. I don’t know how closely it’ll stick to the film, but we’ll have to catch up to that timeline eventually, or create a parallel one with an alternate course. Lee Jong-hyuk stars as the hero, Seo Byung-hoon, who puts his once-day-job skills as a masterful play producer to use in creating this bizarre dating agency that orchestrates romantic scenarios for paying clients, all in an effort to raise enough money to save an old theater. It’s like instead of just hiring one Cyrano, you get a highly efficient team complete with stage props.

Girls’ Generation’s Sooyoung has been cast as one of the members of the dating agency (Gong Min-young, Park Shin-hye’s role in the movie). Lee Chun-hee will play a character that wasn’t in the movie — a man with a mysterious past and the chef of the restaurant that’s next door to the theater where the dating agency is housed.

It’ll be a 16-episode rom-com, from the director of the romantic comedy Happy Ending or Die, and one of the writers of Tamra The Island. I’ve always wanted Cyrano Dating Agency to be a drama (the episodic potential with the various romantically-challenged clients is endless), so I’m looking forward to the adaptation. Now it almost seems like Lee Jong-hyuk’s cameo in Flower Boy Next Door was some kind of carefully planned hidden clue, like a baton-pass from one Flower Boy drama to the next and from Park Shin-hye, who was in Cyrano. Let’s just say it was.

Cyrano Dating Agency follows current Monday-Tuesday drama Nine and premieres in May.

Via Joy News