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.