Lee Min-ho Gets Ready For His Final Act 

South Korean actor Lee Min-ho is all set prove his mettle in the upcoming drama series The Legend of The Blue Sea. The Korean drama is scheduled to air in November, and this SBS TV series would be Lee Min Ho’s last drama before he leaves for mandatory military duty. As evident from the title, The Legend of The Blue Sea is a fantasy series based on mermaids.

Despite The Legend of The Blue Sea still being at pre-production stage, the drama is already receiving enormous attention from Chinese video platforms. Rumors – although denied by Culture Depot — suggest that a Chinese video streaming service platform had offered to bid $500,000 per episode, according to Variety. That would be almost double the sum paid by iQiyi for this year’s megabit Descendants of the Sun. However, one has to wait and watch if Lee Min-ho’s fantasy TV series will surpass the military romance starring Song Joong-ki and Song Hye-kyo.

Read more about Lee Min-ho and Song Joong-ki’s professional rivalry

The screenplay of The Legend of the Blue Sea is motivated by a mermaid tale in the story collection ‘Eou yadam’ by Joseon scholar Yu Mong-in.

Korean super star Gianna Jun will star as Jo Nam-Doo alongside Lee Min-ho who will play the protagonist Heo Joon-Jae. The Legend ofThe Blue Sea is significant to the duo, as they are both making a comeback to the small screen after a hiatus of three years.

For Gianna Jun, it is a return to the television after she became a mother of an adorable baby boy. The Assassination actress married Korean businessman Choi Joon-hyuk on April 13, 2012.

The Legend of The Blue Sea, which will air on SBS on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 10 p.m, has high possibility of gaining prominence across Asia as well as a global success, much like the military romance Descendants of the Sun, starring Song Joong-ki and Song Hye-kyo.

Directed by Jin Hyuk, who previously made Lee Min-ho starrer City Hunter, The Legend of The Blue Sea will be written by Park Ji-eun, the scriptwriter of 2013 pan-Asian megahit My Love from the Star, in which Jun played the female lead.

According to the production company, Culture Depot, The Legend of The Blue Sea is a fantasy romance drama based on a mermaid from Korea‘s first collection of unofficial historical tales.

“The scriptwriter has thought Jun and Lee Min-ho would be the perfect combination from the very beginning, and designed the characters for them. The actors also trusted the writer and the director so much that they confirmed their participation immediately,” said Culture Depot, according to a report by Variety.

Manila Bulletin has reported that Lee Min-ho is exempted from active duty military service and will instead be a public service personnel for two years due to his previous accident.

Lee Min-ho has reportedly sustained multiple injuries when he suffered from a car accident in 2006 along with fellow actor, Jung Il-woo. Lee Min-ho was hospitalized for seven months and had a metal implant inserted in his thigh.

Actor Lee Min-ho is currently riding on the success of his new movie Bounty Hunters.

The new action film opened on July 1 in 52,000 theaters in China and grossed $7.8 million on its release date, states a report by Korea Times.

Actor Lee Min-ho plays Yi San, a handsome young man with exceptional martial arts ability.

“The local response has been really strong. Bounty Hunters topped the most-searched terms on Baidu and Weibo,” said a Starhaus Entertainment official, according to a report by Korea Portal.

The actor will also take part in K-CON that will be held in Los Angeles in July.

[Photo by Kin Cheung/ AP Images]