A VERY quiet weekend for the movies this past weekend. Box office we way down and spread out, with nothing really capturing people’s attention. Moon Geun-young once again was able to open her film in the top spot, with her melodrama LOVE ME NOT (Sarang Ttauin Piryo Eopseo). But with just 327,000 admissions, that was not a huge accomplishment.

(Funny to think that we now live in an age where 327,000 admissions in three days is mediocre. I remember when Moon’s film TALE OF TWO SISTERS broke records with an opening weekend of something over 700,000 admissions. At the time, it was pretty outstanding. Then the 1-million barrier fell. Then 1.6 million (a bunch of films). Then THE HOST scored 2.6 million in its opening weekend in July.)

DEVIL WEARS PRADA and THE PRESTIGE are continuing to do fairly well, with modest dropoffs from last week, and DEATH NOTE still doing okay, too (all were down about 33%).

This Week Title…………………………………. Release Date Screens Nationwide Weekend Attendance (Seoul only) Total Attendance
1. Love Me Not 11.09 341 82,000 327,000
2. The Devil Wears Prada 10.26 193 68,500 1,255,300
3. The Prestige 11.02 130 60,400 434,500
4. Cruel Winter Blues 11.09 296 56,900 260,900
5. Death Note 11.02 200 48,000 555,000
6. Silent Hill 11.09 165 33,900 115,700
7. Tazza: The High Rollers 9.27 176 32,000 6,684,000
8. Hearty Paws 10.26 210 25,000 901,000
9. Educating Kidnappers 11.02 241 14,000 394,000
10. The Guardian 11.02 101 11,700 150,700

(Source: Film2.0)
Next week looks like it will be similarly slow, but the week after that, things should start improving, with some big holiday releases beginning to roll out, starting with Martin Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED (which, of course, I am quite nerded up about seeing).