Bestselling book to become a new Disney live-action fantasy epic
Disney’s teeing up a live-action feature film from a hit South Korean fantasy by Miye Lee — but which novel is getting the big-screen nod?
If there’s one thing Disney enjoys, it’s building vast fantasy worlds out of whatever happens to be lying around—classic fairy tales, old animations, epic novels you barely remember reading. They’ve handed us curious things over the years, from gothic Wonderland to talking wardrobes in Narnia and the cosmic weirdness of A Wrinkle In Time. Now, the Mouse House is ready to try something rather different: they’re steering clear of familiar fables and opening the doors to, of all things, a dream department store.
The Dallergut Dream Department Store has sold over two million copies and expanded into a trilogy since its original South Korean release.
This isn’t a reboot or a paint-by-numbers remake, for once. Instead, Disney are betting big on a South Korean sensation: The Dallergut Dream Department Store. This one started out as an offbeat novel by Miye Lee, which became a bestseller in Korea, then went viral pretty much everywhere else. Think bustling dream city, secret portals behind your eyelids, and a shop where you can literally purchase your nightly adventures. The pitch is simple: our main character Penny nabs her ‘dream’ job—yes, the pun is intentional—flogging dreams to everyone slagging it in their sleep. Naturally, things go sideways as mysterious happenings threaten her customers, and she’s landed with the job of saving the whole snoring lot of them.
Since launch, the original story’s spiralled into not just a massive hit—over two million books sold across 20-odd countries—but a full-blown trilogy. Safe to say, there’s plenty to mine here if you want to build a tentpole franchise. Disney clearly think so: they’ve snapped up the rights and are prepping a live-action feature, which could be their next fantasy juggernaut if it lands right.
Who’s Making It?
Disney aren’t exactly leaving this one to the interns. The script is in the hands of Patrick Ness, who’s got real form for page-to-screen fantasy. He wrote A Monster Calls (which was adapted into one of the better YA films of the past decade) and the Chaos Walking saga (less successful as cinema, but the books are huge). Jessica Virtue, Disney’s current EVP of Production and one of the studio’s top hands for this sort of material, is supervising the show from their side.
- Adapted from: Miye Lee’s Dallergut trilogy, originally a standalone but now three books strong
- Script by: Patrick Ness, also behind A Monster Calls and Chaos Walking
- Production boss: Jessica Virtue, Disney EVP
- Status: In development—early days, but moving out of the ‘let’s talk about it’ phase and into actual scripts
This is the first time Disney’s chasing a property that started as an adult Asian bestseller and genuinely caught fire around the globe (not just as a cult thing, but with positively absurd sales). Ness is, frankly, a solid match: someone who favours big emotion, strange new worlds, and doesn’t mind getting a bit odd. If Disney actually lets him get weird with it, Dallergut could end up being their most out-there fantasy world since Burton’s Alice, at least visually.
No casting news yet, but Disney usually brings in recognisable faces, whether for star power or to keep the fans buzzing. There’s enough room here for an ensemble if they want it—human staff, uncanny dream creatures, the snoozing public, the lot. More intriguing is whether Disney will stick faithfully to Miye Lee’s original blend of oddball humour, dreamy surrealism and gentle social commentary, or just hammer it into another quick franchise shape. Either way, with a bestselling series as its foundation and a robust talent lineup, Dallergut looks set to flex Disney’s blockbuster muscle on new, much weirder turf.