Category: Korean movies (Page 23 of 31)

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)

SPIDER-MAN 3 was on top again this week (raising its total take to $31.4 million), no great surprise there. But it is definitely losing steam, now accounting for 31.9% of the box office. Two films are closing the gap, with over 22% of admissions each.

SHREK 3 does not open until June (to sync with the local school schedule), so that behemoth did not challenge Spidey here last weekend… But PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3: WORLD’S END should provide strong competition when it opens Wednesday.

In the meantime, No. 2 was UNSTOPPABLE MARRIAGE again, with 0% dropoff from last weekend (at least in Seoul). That is right, it sold 86,700 tickets in its opening weekend in Seoul and the exact same last weekend. That is rather impressive, and good counter-programming by Lotte Entertainment (its distributor).

After the strong showing by Ken Watanabe’s MEMORIES OF TOMORROW a week ago, I was surprised to see another Japanese film, TEARS FOR YOU, do much better this weekend. Over 89,000 admissions already (about $600,000). In fact, in just three days, it lapped MEMORIES OF TOMORROW (now with 83,000 admissions). TEARS FOR YOU was something of a surprise hit last fall in Japan, earning just over $30 million there, making it the ninth biggest Japanese movie of 2006.

(Source: Film2.0)

Actually, MEMORIES OF TOMORROW was in 11th, according to the official KOBIS chart. But the No. 10 film was not really a film at all, it was some sort of promotional event for the On Style cable TV station. I guess FILM 2.0 does not count such things.

BREATH, Kim Ki-duk’s latest film, was waaaaaay down in 31st. It is one of the films in competition at Cannes, and so far it has gotten pretty good reviews in THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER and VARIETY, although not enough to register on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic (as I write this, anyhow).

The other Korean film in competition at Cannes, SECRET SUNSHINE, does not open in Korea until Wednesday.

An interesting week for seeing the difference between local blockbusters and foreign blockbusters in South Korea. SPIDER-MAN 3 had another strong week on top of the box office, accounting for an impressive 57.1% of all admissions, bringing its two-week total to 3.9 million admissions, or about $26 million. Very impressive.

Compare that to THE HOST. Sure, SPIDER-MAN 3’s opening weekend was comparable to THE HOST’s. But at the end of THE HOST’s second weekend, it had taken in 6.7 million admissions. That is 72% MORE than SPIDER-MAN 3. On around 150-200 fewer screens, too.

The moral is, Hollywood can open films in Korea as big as any Korean hit, but the box office power of Korean films comes from their staying power and their ability to draw big outside of Seoul. Remember, it was not that long ago that TERMINATOR 3 set an opening weekend record in Korea (then just a wimpy 1 million admissions), but it was not even on the year’s top 10.

In No. 2 this weekend was that comedy UNSTOPPABLE MARRIAGE, about a meeting of the nightmare in-laws-to-be. PARADISE MURDERED is still chugging along in third, a month after it was released.

Fifth spot is more interesting, with the opening of Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s MEMORIES OF TOMORROW. Ken Watanabe won a Japan Academy Award for his role as an advertising agent diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (Russell Edwards wrote a good review here). 45,000 is pretty good for a Japanese melodrama (last year, only one Japanese movie had more than 100,000 admissions, a level MoT should reach) (that was THE SINKING OF JAPAN, which had around 250,000).

The Hong Kong action film DRAGON TIGER GATE opened down in eighth, with just 8,800 admissions in Seoul. However it was more popular in the rest of Korea, with its 51,000 admissions beating MEMORIES OF TOMORROW. Last year, only one Hong Kong film beat 100,000 admissions, Jackie Chan’s ROB-B-HOOD (108,000 admissions).

(Source: Film2.0)

The Korean Film Council just published KOREAN CINEMA: FROM ORIGINS TO RENAISSANCE, a history of movies in Korea, from 1897-ish to the present. Anyhow, you can download the entire book, chapter by chapter.

(Btw, it was a pain the butt finding that URL, in KOFIC’s all-frames website. If the link does not work, go to www.koreanfilm.or.kr, and click on “Publications,” and then “Korean Film History.”)

While I appreciate KOFIC taking the effort to put out a work like that, I must say I found it somewhat disappointing (or at least the parts I have checked out so far). It really is the same old, typical history of Korean film, concentrating on the same old topics, while ignoring some pretty significant, newer research — for example, Brian Yecies’ work on the success of Hollywood in Korea in the 1920s and 30s.

One problem is that the book is basically a translation of a Korean book. The Korean academic writing style is often quite exasperating, especially for people not very well versed in the subject at hand — oodles of statistics and names and jargon, but not much narrative or overarching ideas. Think of the muddled signs you come across at the entrance to Korea’s national parks and major historical sites, but going on for a hundred or so pages.

Also, since the book has no index, its use as a scholarly reference is rather limited, too.

Basically, it reads a lot like a more accessible version of Lee Young-il’s THE HISTORY OF KOREAN CINEMA.

Anyhow, while I complain, I am currently struggling to write my own book (and not a terribly successful struggle), so I have some sympathy with anyone who just gets a project finished. So thanks to KOFIC for continuing to publish more information about the local movie industry.

Reminding me once again why I am not a gambler, SPIDER-MAN 3 way outstripped my predictions with a monster opening — the second-biggest opening ever, next to THE HOST. Yeah, like most of the world, the Spider-Man juggernaut stormed through South Korea last week, smashing all sorts of box office records.

SPIDEY3 opened on 617 screens on Tuesday, pulling in $3.4 million on that day alone (that is the biggest opening day ever in Korea, at least according to Sony Pictures). By the weekend, its screen count had soared to a record 816. 816! In a country with only a little over 1,800 screens. Wow. By the time the first week was done, S3 had earned about $18.3 million.

Other records Sony is claiming include biggest one day attendance, at 825,000, and second-biggest opening week ever, at 2.56 million admissions (just below THE HOST’s 2.64 million).

S3 accounted for 69.7% of all ticket sales, just a smidgen below THE HOST’s opening weekend of 69.8%.

Great box office, however, is about sustaining. The amazing thing about THE HOST was not just its opening, but the fact that it did nearly the same business in its second weekend, at 67.5%. Will SPIDER-MAN 3 sustain? Probably not. Foreign films tend not to have as strong legs as domestic films in Korea. And I think S3’s mediocrity will keep away repeat viewers.

But, as I have said, I would not bet money on my precog abilities.

(FYI, according to Film 2.0, TAEGUKGI opened at 63.2% and SILMIDO a more modest 40%. THE KING AND THE CLOWN opened at just 23%, but did not peak until its third weekend, at 41%.)

There were a few non-Spidery movies, believe it or not. MY SON opened in (distant) second. PARADISE MURDERED is at No. 3.

Further down the chart gets more interesting. After four weekends, MEMORIES OF MATSUKO finally made the top-10 list, landing in ninth (on just five screens around the nation). And Im Kwon-taek’s BEYOND THE YEARS made a reappearance, down in tenth.

(Source: Film2.0)