30 Billion won, Massive Hype, Commercial Stars… So How Did Perfect Crown End Up This Mediocre?
*Perfect Crown* came in with everything — a massive ₩30 billion budget, commercial star casting, constant media buzz, and aggressive marketing positioning it as a “must-watch” event drama. But what actually unfolded was a disappointing final product that never lived up to any of that expectation.
1. The writing and direction for "Perfect Crown" were completely all over the place.
2. Never ever cast two weak actors together. IU is a limited-range actor who needs a strong director, screenplay and co-stars to truly shine. BWS is the same too, except IU is still the better actor between them. Someone please send BWS to an acting academy ASAP because the audience has suffered enough.
3. Gong Seung-yeon is the actual star of this drama, alongside a few other supporting actors who were genuinely doing their job as actors. Despite the limitations of the script, GSY still managed to shine, unlike the main leads.
4. IU and BWS… sorry to say this, but there was genuinely no spark in their chemistry. Nothing at all.
5. A whopping ₩30 billion for only 12 episodes, a prime-time MBC slot, one of Korea’s biggest female celebrity, and currently one of the most popular male actors — this drama was very clearly marketed as a massive “event” series built on commercial casting. So hearing that its average rating was only 11% honestly felt underwhelming. Those numbers would be perfectly respectable for a normal mid-budget drama, but not for a project promoted on this scale. What makes it worse is that a few recent dramas with far less hype, much smaller budgets, and barely any aggressive marketing still managed to pull similar ratings.
6. Truthfully, most people — and probably even the production team themselves — expected this drama to reach the level of massive hits like Queen of Tears or Crash Landing on You considering the amount of money poured into it. Especially for a channel TV drama, this kind of budget is usually invested only when the expectation is record-breaking ratings and massive cultural impact. But it couldn’t even cross a 15% peak rating (the starting mark for major hits), let alone come close to touching the records those dramas achieved.
Conclusion:
While the drama is not a failure in any strict commercial sense, all that money, marketing, and media play still resulted in a product that felt underwhelming. "Perfect Crown" ultimately proves that popularity and hype can never replace strong writing, acting, chemistry, and storytelling.
1. The writing and direction for "Perfect Crown" were completely all over the place.
2. Never ever cast two weak actors together. IU is a limited-range actor who needs a strong director, screenplay and co-stars to truly shine. BWS is the same too, except IU is still the better actor between them. Someone please send BWS to an acting academy ASAP because the audience has suffered enough.
3. Gong Seung-yeon is the actual star of this drama, alongside a few other supporting actors who were genuinely doing their job as actors. Despite the limitations of the script, GSY still managed to shine, unlike the main leads.
4. IU and BWS… sorry to say this, but there was genuinely no spark in their chemistry. Nothing at all.
5. A whopping ₩30 billion for only 12 episodes, a prime-time MBC slot, one of Korea’s biggest female celebrity, and currently one of the most popular male actors — this drama was very clearly marketed as a massive “event” series built on commercial casting. So hearing that its average rating was only 11% honestly felt underwhelming. Those numbers would be perfectly respectable for a normal mid-budget drama, but not for a project promoted on this scale. What makes it worse is that a few recent dramas with far less hype, much smaller budgets, and barely any aggressive marketing still managed to pull similar ratings.
6. Truthfully, most people — and probably even the production team themselves — expected this drama to reach the level of massive hits like Queen of Tears or Crash Landing on You considering the amount of money poured into it. Especially for a channel TV drama, this kind of budget is usually invested only when the expectation is record-breaking ratings and massive cultural impact. But it couldn’t even cross a 15% peak rating (the starting mark for major hits), let alone come close to touching the records those dramas achieved.
Conclusion:
While the drama is not a failure in any strict commercial sense, all that money, marketing, and media play still resulted in a product that felt underwhelming. "Perfect Crown" ultimately proves that popularity and hype can never replace strong writing, acting, chemistry, and storytelling.
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