‘Black Knight’ tops TV charts, sees big opening success

Netflix series “Black Knight” topped the non-English television charts at No. 1 Wednesday, three days after its release.

Netflix users watched the dystopian sci-fi series for a total of 31.2 million hours this week, the streaming service said.

Aside from Netflix’s internal rankings, “Black Knight” also topped streaming service charts at second place in Korea on aggregator FlixPatrol on Monday and Tuesday. FlixPatrol does not provide data for the first day of release.

“Black Knight,” starring Kim Woo-bin, Song Seung-heon, Kang Yoo-seok and Esom, is set in an apocalyptic dystopian future where ordinary people rely on couriers for supplies of fresh air to survive.

With this early success of “Black Knight,” eyes are on whether the sci-fi genre in Korea could see a boost. Previous recent sci-fi works, including “Space Sweepers” (2021), “The Silent Sea” (2021) and “Jung_E” (2023) – all also on Netflix — have not managed to gain critical or commercial success.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]