Hotel Del Luna premiere: IU and Yeo Jin-Goo share a macabre love in a beautiful hotel for the dead

The Total Variety Network (tvN) recently premiered their latest K-drama, a macabre love story titled Hotel del Luna. Fans are loving the new series after its first two episodes aired that it even surpassed its predecessor, Arthdal Chronicles, in domestic viewership.

Welcome to the hotel for the dead!

Hotel del Luna — which literally means Hotel of the Moon — is a macabre love story. It stars Lee Ji-Eun, who is better known by her music career mononym IU, and Yeo Jin-Goo.

Jan Man-Wol (IU) is the CEO of Hotel del Luna, a hotel where the dead goes to finish whatever tasks they could not finish in life in order to move onward in the afterlife. Apparently, the hotel picks its CEO or “owners” among people who commit horrendous sins.

In Man-Wol’s case, she has killed a lot of people. The only way she can escape is to find someone who has committed a far worse sin than she has. The only problem is she doesn’t remember what she has done in the past.

Goo Chan-Seong (Yeo Jin-Goo) was doomed/destined to work at Hotel del Luna even as a young boy. His father was on the cusp of dying and while in Hotel del Luna, was caught stealing by Jan Man-Wol, in exchange for his life, Chan-Seong’s father has to give Chan-Seong to the hotel within 25 years time.

Together, Jan Man-Wol and Goo Chan-Seong will work and run Hotel del Luna. And as it seems to show in the foreshadowing, Man-Wol may finally have found someone to love all these centuries in Chan-Seong.

Better than Song Joong-Ki’s comeback

To Song-Song fans (though Song-Song is no more), the above statement may be mean but it is true. The debut episode for Hotel del Luna did better than the debut episode for Arthdal Chronicles, the K-drama that took its time slot prior.

According to AGB Nielsen Korea, Arthdal Chronicles earned a viewership rating of 6.729 percent for its first episode. On the other hand, Hotel del Luna earned 7.327 percent for its first episode. Probably the stars and the concept of the latter appealed to viewers more.

As for international viewers, Hotel del Luna has a 9.8 rating averaged from over 500 viewers. Since it is fairly new, we don’t know how popular it is on Rakuten Viki right now. We do know that Arthdal Chronicles wasn’t as popular as other K-dramas on Netflix though.

Right now, Hotel del Luna is off to a good start. However, with 14 more episodes to go, things can change.

Hotel del Luna airs subsequent episodes on Saturdays and Sundays at 9:00 p.m. KST on tvN. For international viewers, it airs exclusively on Rakuten Viki. Viewers will need to be subscribed to Viki Pass Standard to watch though.

Source: Read Full Article