Park Eun-bin gets superpowers in ‘The Wonderfools’; Cha Eun-woo makes the cut

It’s 1999 all over again, and Park Eun-bin is back with the director who turned her into a global name — alongside a co-star nobody was sure would make the final cut.

Set on the cusp of the millennium, when Y2K paranoia and end-of-the-world chatter were everywhere, “The Wonderfools” follows four misfits in a small town who stumble into superpowers they’re spectacularly ill-equipped to handle.

It happens to be a near-full reunion for the team behind “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” the 2022 megahit series that ran for 21 weeks on Netflix’s non-English top 10. Director Yoo In-sik is back, joined again by Choi Dae-hoon and Im Seong-jae alongside Park.

Park plays Chae-ni, the local menace with a knack for trouble, who finds herself teleporting around at random. “I wanted to do a project that was simply fun,” she said at Tuesday’s press conference at a hotel in central Seoul.

“The script struck me as wildly inventive from the first read. I figured if I could pull it off, I’d be having a blast — and I did.”

No surprise, then, that the chemistry between director and star was hard to miss. “Working on ‘Attorney Woo, I came away convinced there’s nothing she can’t do. She’s got serious comic timing, and she’s fearless,” the director said of his lead.

Veteran Son Hyun-joo, playing the leader of a shadowy outfit running experiments behind the scenes, rounds out the senior cast alongside Kim Hae-sook. “I thought I had it rough on set,” Son said. “Then I caught a glimpse of the monitor and felt awful for the four leads. They really put in the work.”

The name on everyone’s mind, though, was Cha Eun-woo, who plays a buttoned-up civil servant with telekinetic powers he’d rather not flaunt.

As has been publicized to death at this point, the 29-year-old is currently completing his mandatory military service in the wake of a massive tax-evasion mess. He’s said to have settled it last month for around 13 billion won ($8.7 million), though the National Tax Service initially flagged closer to 20 billion in undeclared income routed through a company in his mother’s name.

In Korea, that kind of scandal can erase a star from a project entirely — cut from the final edit, scrubbed from the posters, memory-holed Soviet-style. There were whispers about whether Cha would get the same treatment or whether viewers would still be allowed to feast their eyes on his freakishly pretty face.

Turns out, “The Wonderfools” has done none of that. Cha’s face is right there in the official poster, character art and trailer — every scene he shot looks to have made the final cut.

“We learned about the news the same way everyone else did, through the headlines, after editing was already largely wrapped,” the director said. “This project was a long-held dream for me and a hard-fought labor for everyone involved. We prioritized the work as a whole.”

He declined to comment on Cha in personal terms, but added: “His performance was a real challenge — physically and emotionally — and like the rest of the cast, he gave it everything. I’m pleased with how it turned out.”

Park closed the event with a nudge toward the show’s setting. “We packed in a lot of turn-of-the-century flavor,” she said. “Soak that in, it’s part of the fun.”

“The Wonderfools” drops on Netflix Friday.