Despite Netflix’s push in recent years to put out more original titles, the streamer can’t seem to hold onto some of its Netflix originals. Following the departures of several Netflix original series this month, the Netflix Original South Korean drama Prison Playbook is scheduled to leave Netflix on Monday, Jan. 23.
Prison Playbook‘s departure wasn’t included in the streamer’s list of outgoing titles for January 2023. Rather, its upcoming exit was only confirmed on the show’s listing on the Netflix platform, which now warns, “Last day to watch on Netflix: January 23.” Airing in South Korea between late 2017 and early 2018, before arriving on Netflix just six days after its series finale aired in South Korea on January 24, 2018, Prison Playbook stars Park Hae-soo as Kim Je-hyuk, a superstar baseball player who, just days before his major league baseball debut, unexpectedly finds himself behind bars after protecting his sister from an assault. The series follows Kim as he adjusts to life in jail and follows the lives of convicts behind bars, their families and duty officers working in the correctional facilities. Along with Park, the series also stars Jung Kyung-ho.
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The series was a massive success and became one of the highest-rated Korean series in cable television history. The show currently sits at No. 24 on the list of highest-rated cable dramas of all time, per What’s On Netflix, and was once the third highest-rated cable k-drama. The series ran for a total of 16 episodes.
Unfortunately for K-drama fans, Prison Playbook is not the only K-drama departing in 2023. According to What’s On Netflix, at least six other K-drama titles are set to depart at some point this year. In March, Bad Guys: Vile City (16 episodes, March 8), A Korean Odyssey (20 episodes, March 9), and Live (18 episodes, March 16) are scheduled to depart. They will be followed on May 24 by Wolf Brigade, one of the first internationally licensed Korean films on Netflix, and all three available episodes of Hymn of Death on Dec. 5.
The upcoming exodus of K-dramas titled as Netflix originals from the Netflix streaming library seems to boil down to licensing issues. While these titles are styled as Netflix originals, many are internationally licensed, with Netflix serving as the U.S. distributor, meaning that Netflix does not serve as a producer for the shows, but instead pays a premium fee to be the exclusive worldwide distributor outside of South Korea. Prison Playbook, for example, came to Netflix as part of the tvN output deal. For many of these titles, it seems likely that their licensing deals are set to expire.
