"You Who Came From The Stars" was so popular in China that there are plans to release a feature length version there. The Chinese production company Mang Jiang Wei Film has purchased the publication rights from the drama's producers and is making plans to turn the 21-episode drama into a two-hour feature film.
The SBS drama about an alien, played by Kim Soo Hyun, who falls for a Hallyu star, played by Jun Ji Hyun, was wildly popular in China, spawning interest in everything the stars wore and ate and did.
The film will include the most important parts of the drama as well as some previously unreleased scenes. That means even fans that devotedly saw the entire series will have a new reason to see the film.
At the same time SBS is suing an Indonesian television network Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia because they claim that station's new drama "Kau Yang Berasal Dari Bintang" stole the idea of their plot.
"It's not a drama that was made with full rights, said an SBS representative. The show is said to feature an almost identical setting and storyline.
SBS was in the process of negotiating the rights with another Indonesian company when this drama aired to enthusiastic response.
It's ironic because the producers of "You Who Came From The Stars" have themselves been accused of plagiarism. A manga writer named Kang Kyung Ok said that there were too many similarities between her comic "Sul Hee" and the drama. She was so sure of her claim that she decided to take legal action.
On her blog she wrote that it was possible for other people to write about the UFO sighting in the Gwanghaegun records, which inspired both her comic and the drama. At least five people have written about it so far. Yet her comic and the drama had more areas in common. These similarities include the specific use of 400 years, your fate being intertwined with a person you met in a past life, a period of 12 years since one of the characters saved another and a love triangle with a childhood friend.
When she approached the drama's producers, they denied having ever seen her comic.
"At first my goal was to discover the truth," wrote Kang Kyung Ok. But she decided that it was not right for the producers to avoid responsibility by saying they had not seen the comic book. "As a writer I felt like I had a social responsibility."
Other aspects of the story are hardly original and have appeared in previous alien-human romances such as the film "Man From The Stars," David Bowie's film "The Man Who Fell To Earth" and even "Twilight."
Who owns this story? And how much of it do they own? And would the story even be the same without Jun Ji Hyun and Kim Soo Hyun?
Let us know what you think.