Author: Mark (Page 76 of 90)

Title – Weekend Seoul Admissions – Total Nationwide Admissions

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – 227,500 – 3,887,600
2. Secret Sunshin – 114,200 – 982,800
3. Confession of Pain (Seung Sing) – 19,100 -57,200
4. The Evil Twin – 17,300 – 373,800
5. Spider-Man 3 – 14,400 – 4,912,600
6. Unstoppable Marriage – 13,700 – 1,262,400
7. Next – 13,000 – 469,000
8. Death Water – 11,400 – 42,700
9. Factory Girls – 4,100 – 6,500
10. Marie Antoinette – 900 – 7,400

Hey, look at that. We finally have a release date for D-WAR, the humungous dragon/action movie. And that date would be August 2. You can go to the D-WAR website to check out the trailer and posters and things (only Korean, sorry).

UPDATE: I need to check my press releases more carefully. The D-WAR release also says that the monster movie is going to be released in the United States in August, on around 1,500 screens. By the distributor Freestyle Releasing, if you are interested. At any rate, 1,500 would be by far the biggest release ever for a Korean movie in the United States… or anywhere for that matter. Even half that number would be pretty impressive.

Incidentally, Showbox (the Korea distributor) is now downplaying D-WAR’s budget. Instead of $70 million, they are now saying $30 million… The other $40 million was apparently for technical development and related investments at the production house, and so is separate from the movie’s actual budget.

Kind of a funny story I heard about SHREK 3 and CJ Entertainment, the local distributor of SHREK 3. On Monday, they held the early press screening for the film… however that was when news broke about Jeon Do-yeon’s big win at Cannes, so very few people apparently turned up for it.

The next day, CJE had a press conference with Cameron Diaz (who does the princess’ voice in SHREK 3). But it was scheduled for the same time as the Jeon Do-yeon press conference, so again there was a pretty light turnout.

Poor Dreamworks, foiled by Jeon Do-yeon at every turn.

(At least that is what people are saying… but it is a funny story, even if exaggerated).

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In other news, expect very light blogging for the next month or so. My book deadline is rapidly approaching and I have a lot of work to do still. Will try to do the weekly box office still, but I am not sure if I will have time for much else.

Here are a couple of early posters for Kim Jee-woon’s THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WEIRD. I would say that the images are good, the cut lines are somewhere between bad and weird (or at least clumsy). Enjoy.

In case the posters are too small for you to read well, they say:
Poster #1 – Never be sure who is good, bad or weird in 1930s Manchuria
Poster #2 – A man who was too proud to be bad
Poster #3 – A man who desired too much to be good
Poster #4 – A man who was too wacky to be good or bad

We have a new champion for the title of biggest ever opening in Korea. Kind of. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3: AT WORLD’S END sold 2.71 million tickets since it opened on May 23, good for about $19.6 million.

The previous champ, THE HOST, opened to 2.63 million admissions and about $17.5 million. However, POTC:AWE (okay, PIRATES is easier) got the benefit of a longer opening, hitting screens on Wednesday and then getting a holiday Thursday. Just to compare, PIRATES 3 in Seoul, Friday to Sunday, had 474,500 admissions. THE HOST had 540,000.

But that is academic. As far as the studios are concerned, an opening can begin Wednesday, so it all counts. Congratulations PIRATES 3, you can collect your prize at the door.

Want more data? I have got oodles. PIRATES 3 had the biggest percentage of the box office ever, accounting for 71.3% of all tickets sold last weekend. And its 912 screens is just ridiculous (nearly half the screens in all of Korea): easily a record. In fact, Korea was nearly PIRATES 3’s most successful non-USA opening in the world.
Worldwide – $205.5 million
UK – $25.8M
Korea – $19.6M
France – $16.7M
Germany – $16.9M
Japan – $15.7M
Russia at $13.7M
(Figures courtesy Deadline Hollywood).

Lee Chang-dong’s SECRET SUNSHINE won a much more interesting prize than just bags of money at the box office — it picked up the Best Actress Award at Cannes, for the lead Jeon Do-yeon. This is the first time for a Korean actor to win the top prize at one of the three major European film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) since Kang Soo-yeon won at Venice for THE SURROGATE WOMB, way back in 1987 (although Moon So-ri did win the Marcello Mastroianni Award for best newcomer at Venice in 2002 for another Lee Chang-dong film, OASIS).

Anyhow, SECRET SUNSHINE opened at No. 2, with 350,000 admissions nationwide. Much better than Lee’s OASIS did was back in the summer of 2002, which opened with 200,800 admissions. OASIS eventually pulled in about 1.2 million admissions when its run finished, about two months later. The Korean film market is a very different place than it was back then, but I still hope SECRET SUNSHINE does well.

No. 3 for SPIDER-MAN 3. Of course PIRATES 3 was going to devastate its numbers, but, wow, what a one-week drop. From 627 screens around the nation to just 290 (“just” 290), and a 75% drop in admissions. I am sure SHREK 3 will do much the same to PIRATES 3.

In fourth we have the first Korean horror film of the summer, THE EVIL TWIN (a revival of THE LEGENDARY TOWN television series).

The Japanese film TEARS FOR YOU made it over 100,000 admissions, a fairly rare occurrence for Japanese films. Good for TEARS.

MARIE ANTOINETTE made the top 10, despite appearing in just two theaters. In general, PIRATES gutted the rest of the top-10 this week.

(Source: Film2.0)