8 Years Later, 'The Americans' Returns With an Unexpected Twist

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Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys in The Americans as Elizabeth and Philip standing side by side.

Published Mar 25, 2026, 12:59 PM EDT

Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.

This May will mark exactly eight years since FX's spy drama The Americans ended after six seasons. Though much has happened in the landscape of television since, it's still regarded as one of the greatest espionage shows to ever air, anchored by two remarkable leads in Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys in a career-defining performance. Joe Weisberg spearheaded the series as both creator and co-showrunner, leading it to four Emmy wins, including one for Rhys, a Golden Globe for Best Television Series – Drama, and five straight seasons of being named AFI TV Program of the Year. Now, Disney+ is bringing it back out of the woodwork, though not in a way anyone could expect.

The streamer has begun production on a reimagining of the series titled The Koreans, taking viewers to South Korea to follow another middle-class family with a dark secret. Set to stream on Disney+ and Hulu internationally, this new spin will see Squid Game's Lee Byung-hun and Heavenly Ever After's Han Jimin take the places of Rhys and Russell's undercover spies, only instead of being KGB officers hiding in the suburbs, they are North Korean infiltrators. Ahn Gil-ho, known for directing Netflix's megahit K-drama The Glory, will be behind the camera, with Made in Korea's Park Eun-kyo charged with adapting The Americans in its new form. IMAGINUS and Studio AA are producing.

The Koreans unfolds "during the wave of democratization and cultural modernization that swept across South Korea in the early 1990s" and follows a seemingly normal middle-class South Korean family. While nobody, from the friends and neighbors they see every day to their own kids, suspects them of anything untoward, they are secretly working on behalf of the North Korean government to take down the country from within. Their mission will not only highlight the contrasts between the neighboring countries' cultures but also force the couple to grapple with their conflicting feelings of love, patriotism, and loyalty to their homeland. All the while, they have a ruthless Korean counterintelligence officer, not unlike FBI agent Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), on their tails, drawing ever closer to unraveling their treasonous secrets.

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'The Koreans' Is Disney+'s Latest Expansion to Its K-Drama Slate

With the rise in popularity of K-dramas and international television in general of late, Disney+ has been making huge strides with its APAC of Korean originals. Park's aforementioned Made in Korea was one of their big productions, alongside the high-octane action thriller The Tyrant and the star-studded Tempest. The Koreans feels like a bit of a different beast altogether, though, as a reimagining of an already acclaimed show under Disney's wider umbrella with two massive stars at the top. Lee, in particular, is coming off a monster year that saw him finish out Squid Game Season 3, lead Park Chan-wook's latest acclaimed feature, No Other Choice, and voice the villain of Netflix's world-dominating summer smash KPop Demon Hunters.

The Koreans is currently in production. In the meantime, all episodes of The Americans can be found on Hulu. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the high-profile Disney+ reimagining.

Release Date 2013 - 2018

Showrunner Joe Weisberg

Directors Daniel Sackheim, Thomas Schlamme, Daniel Attias, Kevin Dowling, Stefan Schwartz, Adam Arkin, Matthew Rhys, Nicole Kassell, Noah Emmerich, Andrew Bernstein, John Dahl, Kevin Bray, Roxann Dawson, Steph Green, Sylvain White, Alex Chapple, Alik Sakharov, Bill Johnson, Charlotte Sieling, Christopher Misiano, Constantine Makris, Gavin O'Connor, Gregory Hoblit, Gwyneth Horder-Payton

Writers Melissa James Gibson, Stuart Zicherman, Hilary Bettis, Bradford Winters, Angelina Burnett, Sneha Koorse

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