Controversy Surrounds ‘The Escape of Seven’: Massive Production Cost But Disappointing Performance
Where did the massive 46 billion won production cost of ‘The Escape of Seven’ go?
“Penthouse” writer Kim Soon-ok, nicknamed “The Master of Chaos” seems to be struggling. Starting at 6% in the first episode and slightly increasing to 7.7% in the fourth episode, “The Escape of Seven” dropped to 5.6% from episode 5. It has recently stopped at 6.5% in episode 8, slipping to third place in the weekend drama competition.
The future of “The Escape Seven” is even more dismal. This is because of ‘My Dearest’ Part 2. According to the TV popularity ranking announced on October 16th by the Good Data, ‘My Dearest’ ranked first in drama+OTT integrated popularity, overall program popularity, and Friday-Saturday drama popularity, proving its success with Part 2 just like Part 1.
‘The Escape of Seven’ is a picaresque revenge drama about seven villains entangled in the disappearance of a girl who vanished due to lies and desires, and their struggle for survival. As the new drama by Kim Soon-ok, the writer of ‘Penthouse’, it received explosive attention even before its premiere.
However, the reason for its disappointing performance score contrary to expectations can be found in the provocative material and unpleasant development. Just a few years ago, no matter how implausible the plot was, viewers were enthralled by Kim Soon-ok’s speedy development, as seen in ‘Temptation of Wife,’ and the ‘Penthouse’ series.
But this time, Kim Soon-ok went too far with “The Escape of Seven”. Original adultery, underage pregnancy, group hallucinations, and drugs. Birth mother doesn’t care whether her daughter lives or dies, and the daughter-in-law kills her father-in-law without feeling any guilt. At least one person dies in each episode, they conspire to commit murder, and plot to drag others into the abyss.
As a result, in an already gloomy world, is there a reason to for viewers to want to watch villains screaming every five minutes? The strange sense of catharsis that Kim Soon-ok’s previous dramas provided, with their speedy and outlandish stories, has disappeared. Instead, viewers’ irritation has built up.
This also raises doubts about where the enormous production cost of 46 billion won went. If the story was weak, it would have been nice to compensate with spectacular visuals, but characters like the unicorn and Aurora appearing in hallucinations only provoked laughter.
Comparing it to ‘Sword of Aramoon,’ where a few tribes build a country and spectacularly display hundreds of combat scenes with a production cost known to be 50 billion won, it’s still unclear where ‘The Escape of Seven’ spent that much production cost.
On the other hand, ‘My Dearest’ recorded a viewership rating of 9.3% on October 14th, while ‘Strong Girl Nam-soon’ recorded a viewership rating of 9.8% on October 15th. In particular, ‘Strong Girl Nam-soon’ gained attention after starting with a 4.296% rating on its first episode on October 7th and achieved a self-record high viewership rating of 9.760% on October 15th after only four episodes.
Source: daum
