Month: February 2009 (Page 1 of 2)

It has been a long, steady climb, but at last, six weeks after being released, the low-budget documentary OLD PARTNER (Wonang Sori) is the No. 1 film in the land. OLD PARTNER pulled in nearly 3 billion won ($1.5 million … yikes, what an exchange rate) over the weekend to bring its total box office to 9.4 billion won ($6.3 million).

Not bad for a $70,000 film that opened on just seven screens.

Additionally, Korean movies took in three of the top four spots on the chart this week, with HANDPHONE (Haendeupon) opening in third and THE SCAM (Jakjeon) in fourth.

Must be rather disappointing for HANDPHONE, making just 1.7 billion won ($1.2 million) despite opening on 443 screens; even with its great surge, OLD PARTNER is still on only 276 screens).

THE SCAM has now pulled in over 870,000 admissions and 5.8 billion won ($3.9 million).

Just one other Korean film on the chart this week, as SCANDAL MAKERS (Gwasok Seukaendeul) landed in ninth, bringing its total revenue to 52.9 billion won ($36 million). According to KOBIS, SCANDAL MAKERS is now at 8.1 million admissions, but remember that KOBIS does not track every theater in the nation, so SCANDAL MAKERS has probably done slightly better than that. The film is almost certainly now ahead of FRIEND to become the sixth-biggest movie ever in Korea.

The biggest non-Korean, non-Hollywood film, RED CLIFF 2, fell to 13th. In five weeks the John Woo epic pulled in 2.7 million admissions and made 18 billion won ($12 million).

Oh, and MARINE BOY is nearly done, too, landing in 12th, with 24,000 admissions to bring its total to 825,000 admissions.

The surprise hit documentary OLD PARTNER is now being shown with English subtitles at the Yongsan CGV theater.

In fact, this website claims to have the screening times… although I cannot confirm how accurate they are. But it is a fairly short film, so it plays pretty frequently throughout the day.

I don’t know if it is still playing with subtitles at the Indiespace theater in Myeongdong. There is no sign of subtitles on the Indiespace website.

But if your Korean is up to speed, the director of DAYTIME DRINKING will be at the theater on Feb. 23 at 6:25 to talk about his movie.

Benjamin Button might be curious, but Korea’s cow movie OLD PARTNER is still the biggest news in the local movie scene.

A month after being released, OLD PARTNER (Wonang Sori) had its best weekend yet, pulling in another 1.8 billion won ($1.3 million) from 270,000 admissions. The ultra-low budget documentary has now made $3.4 million. In fact, President Lee Myung-bak went to see the movie a few days ago, giving the movie a nice little bit of publicity (in fact, with that act alone Lee Myung-bak probably did more for the film industry than five years of Roh Moo-hyun).

The top film last weekend was BENJAMIN BUTTON, making 3.05 billion won (about $2.17 million) since its release on Feb. 12.

Very close behind in No. 2 was the South Korean film THE SCAM (Jakjeon), with 2.98 billion won ($2.13 million).

At No. 5 was MARINE BOY. The big action film is probably one week away from being surpassed by OLD PARTNER, despite having a budget roughly 50 times bigger. Yeah, that’s schadenfreude I’m feeling, too.

(If Marine Boy, Modern Boy and Oldboy got into a fight, who would win?).

Btw, Korean movies are now up to 46.5 percent of the box office for the year. Things seem to be getting better, at least at the moment.

Good news for Korean movie fans in Seoul — Indiespace (aka Spongehouse Myeongdong, formerly the Joongang Cinema) is playing the documentary OLD PARTNER with English subtitles.

OLD PARTNER is about an elderly couple in Gyeongsang Province and their 40-year-old cow. The film opened on Jan. 15 on just seven screens, selling just 5,575 tickets in its opening weekend. But word of mouth was strong, and the next weekend OLD PARTNER moved up to 10th, growing to 23 screens. The next weekend it was also in 10th place, but expanded to over 50 screens.

The film must have then passed some sort of tipping point, because last weekend the film was the fourth-biggest third-biggest movie in Korea. Now on 167 screens, the film pulled in 162,000 admissions over the weekend, bringing its total to 302,000.

(Note: KOBIS has updated its weekend statistics since I last wrote my box office story. SCANDAL MAKERS has been downgraded to fourth, after apparently being a little overoptimistic about its weekend performance).

Thanks to Gusts of Popular Feelings for the info. He also talks about some of the problems the couple from the film have been having since the movie became popular.

Trying something a little different this week for the box office chart. Straight from the nice folks at KOFIC, I present:

Korean film MARINE BOY was the top film in the country last weekend, with a decent but hardly overwhelming 2.8 billion won (about $2.1 million).

It was the weakest showing for a No. 1 film since HELLO SCHOOLGIRL back at the end of November (or maybe even MY WIFE GOT MARRIED, but at the beginning of November). In MARINE BOY’s defence, the film only opened on a modest 395 screens — HELLO SCHOOLGIRL and MY WIFE GOT MARRIED were shown on over 450.

(UPDATE: Sorry, but KOBIS and KOFIC have since updated their data. MARINE BOY did mediocre business, but not as bad as it looked a few hours ago).

The John Woo film RED CLIFF 2 came in second, with 1.81 billion won ($1.3 million), bringing its total thus far to 16.6 billion won. After just two weeks in release, RED CLIFF 2 has already done far better than the first RED CLIFF, which barely topped 11 billion won last summer.

SCANDAL MAKERS (Gwasok Seukaendeul) is still going strong, in third spot, having now earned over 51 billion won. With its 7.9 million admissions and still going strong, it looks like the film is going to top 8 million before it is done. Right now it is the 8th biggest film ever in Korea, with WELCOME TO DONGMAKGOL, FRIEND and D-WAR getting closer and closer.

Is the Korean ox movie, OLD PARTNER (Wonang Sori) getting some traction? The film climbed to No. 4 last weekend, as distributor Indie Story puts it in more and more cinemas. In fact, over the three-day weekend, OLD PARTNER made more money than it did in the previous two weeks combined. I doubt it is going to explode like THE WAY HOME did in 2002, but still, kind of interesting to see such a small film doing okay.

New Korean release KITCHEN flopped badly, opening just in 10th, despite being on 228 screens.

For the record, half of the top 10 was Korean this week, and Korean movies so far in 2009 are taking in 45.9 percent of the box office. And the rest is not all Hollywood — so far this year, European films have comprised 13.7 percent and Hong Kong/China has 12.5 percent, while Hollywood has 25.6 percent. Very safe to say those numbers will not hold up, once Hollywood started releasing its big guns, but an interesting way to start the year.

(NOTE: All numbers updated this afternoon. But the basic points of the post basically hold true).