Holy crap! Korean movies in May had their worst month on record — just 7.8 percent of the boxoffice. KOFIC says that is the lowest level they have since 2000 (when they started tracking). Ouch.
Just one Korean film in the top 10 this week, GIRL SCOUT, so the bad news is going to continue for at least a little while longer.
Oh, and I am going back to tracking attendance, at least for this week. For some reason KOBIS is not updating, so I am using Film 2.0 stats, and they only track attendance. Not sure yet what I am going to do going forward.
(UPDATE: KOBIS finally updated its website. And this week’s numbers were slightly different than the earlier estimate, so I have updated below)
| This Week | Title…………………………………….. | Release Date | Screens Nationwide | Weekend Revenue (billion won) | Total Revenue (billion won) |
| 1. | Kung Fu Panda | 6.05 | 632 | 7.40 | 8.09 |
| 2. | Indiana Jones and the Bored Our of My Skull | 5.22 | 527 | 3.78 | 24.43 |
| 3. | Sex & the City | 6.05 | 412 | 2.41 | 3.02 |
| 4. | What Happens in Vegas | 5.29 | 299 | 1.01 | 3.83 |
| 5. | Girl Scout (Korean) | 6.05 | 292 | 0.88 | 1.05 |
| 6. | Prince Caspian | 5.15 | 236 | 0.57 | 9.09 |
| 7. | The Eye | 6.05 | 123 | 0.35 | 0.41 |
| 8. | 88 Minutes | 5.29 | 236 | 0.32 | 1.76 |
| 9. | Iron Man | 4.30 | 99 | 0.15 | 27.75 |
| 10. | Body | 5.29 | 118 | 0.079 | 0.69 |
(Source: Film 2.0)
As bleak as things are at the moment, they should start looking up soon, as some of Korea’s biggest films of the summer start to unroll — PUBLIC ENEMY 3 on June 19, CROSSING on June 26 and THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD on July 10 17.
Not so big but potentially interesting is the rotoscope romantic comedy SHE WAS COOL on June 12, Kwak Jae-young’s latest exercise in too-much-is-just-enough MY MIGHTY PRINCESS on June 26, and the historical epic THE DIVINE WEAPON on Aug. 7.
What’s the story with My Mighty Princess? I thought maybe it was another title for Cyborg She but the IMDB has a separate page for Princess (not that that proves anything.) IMDB also says it came out in September of ’07.