Ten Years On, Goblin Moves From Record TV Ratings to the Musical Stage

Library Company signed a rights agreement with Studio Dragon and screenwriter Kim Eun-sook on the 23rd to develop a stage musical adaptation of Goblin, the tvN drama that peaked at a 20.5% nationwide rating when it aired in late 2016. That figure made it one of the highest-rated cable dramas in Korean television history, and the IP has stayed in circulation since: a tenth-anniversary variety special, Goblin 10th Anniversary Trip, aired on tvN in July.

The rights package covers domestic and international musical production in full, with Library Company taking responsibility for everything from initial concept to global staging. The company's stated intention is to build a large-format production aimed at audiences beyond Korea from the outset, rather than developing a domestic run first and then touring.

What Library Company brings to the project

Library Company is a relatively young but active player in the Korean musical sector with a track record that extends to both Broadway and the West End. In 2022, the company served as co-producer on the Broadway productions & Juliet and Some Like It Hot, and on the West End productions Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) and Born with Teeth. Domestically, its music-theatre work Seom: 1933–2019 won the Edaily Culture Award for Best Musical, and two other productions, The Long Night and Laika, were nominated in the musical category at the 62nd Baeksang Arts Awards.

Chief executive Kim Myeong-eun, who will oversee the production, said in a statement that the team intends to preserve the emotional texture of the original while adding what she described as the specific kind of resonance that only a live stage can deliver. She also framed the project in terms of the company's longer ambition: building Library Company into a global IP studio known for translating major Korean properties into live formats.

The source material and its cultural weight

The original drama, formally titled Goblin: The Lonely and Great God, starred Gong Yoo and Kim Go-eun and was produced by Studio Dragon as a special project marking tvN's tenth anniversary. It swept the TV division at the 53rd Baeksang Arts Awards, with Kim Eun-sook taking the grand prize for writing and Gong Yoo winning best actor in a drama.

The production plan calls for the Korean folkloric elements at the heart of the story to remain intact while the universal themes of life, death, love, and fate are given room to travel across cultures. Large-scale staging and an original score designed for a major theatre venue are both part of the brief.

A broader portfolio push

This deal fits a pattern Library Company has been building deliberately. The company was recently selected for the Arts Management Support Center's large-scale musical reading performance programme, through which it will present Hyeonhok, a musical based on a Naver webtoon, before the end of the year. With Goblin now secured alongside Hyeonhok, Library Company is actively assembling the kind of large-theatre lineup that positions it as a serious long-term force in the sector rather than a project-by-project producer.

For the broader K-drama industry, the move is worth watching. Korean IP has migrated steadily into adjacent formats over the past decade, from films to webtoons to merchandise, but large-scale international musical theatre is still a relatively new frontier. How Library Company handles the adaptation's tone and scale will say something about whether the format can carry the weight of properties built on intimate, character-driven television drama.