[South Korea Box Office]

What do you mean? Mad Max topped the Sunday box office in admissions and gross. 

 

Yeah, MAD MAX is in great shape. Sunday was three times higher than its opening day. Question is, how far will WOM take it? 2.5 mil seems a safe minimum but I'd wager it could go further.

[South Korea Box Office]

Another bad drop for Age of Ultron. I'm beginning to feel that some of our comments on it's first Friday was justified. The discrepancy between weekends/holidays and normal weekdays is massive and for the most hyped film in history, its post-holiday drops have been brutal. It's already a success in its own right being so close to 10 million admissions, a feat only achieved by 3 foreign released to date. But it has continuously throughout its run showed signs of average word of mouth that was periodically drowned out by amazing business on holidays. 

 

Mad Max currently has a 9.22/10.0 Netizen rating on Naver which is really good. Seeing it this weekend to see what the fuss is all about

 

Just back from my screening. It's sensational, best action film of the decade so far for me. People actually clapped at the end of the film. While common in some places (namely the US), I've never seen that happen in Korea.

[South Korea Box Office]

I wouldn't be surprised if it's pants tbh, the topic seems to be very generic as is the title. I was sort of hoping that the acting would be strong enough to counter this (big Son Hyun-ju fan) but maybe it was too much to ask

 

I do wonder with the extremely strong reviews coming in from abroad, what kind of word of mouth Mad Max will receive upon release here in Korea. A Kingsman type of run would be awesome

 

I really didn't like CHRONICLES OF EVIL. It's harmless but an awfully generic investigative/revenge thriller. I like Son Hyun-ju too but producers seem content to ask him to repeat his HIDE AND SEEK performance.

 

Next week's release, THE TREACHEROUS, is even worse. I imagine it'll have a decent opening due to curiosity over its ero elements but bad WOM will push it straight down. THE SHAMELESS, out the week after, is much better, but I daresay it won't light the box office on fire. It's too slow for a mainstream audience. Basically, no Korean hits for May I think...

[South Korea Box Office]

All things considered, it's a pretty decent weekly drop for Age of Ultron. Mad Max: Fury Road and The Chronicles of Evil both open tomorrow and they are currently ahead of Age of Ultron in presales. As it is, Age of Ultron is currently filling a mere 6.8% of its allocated seats during weekdays so the loss of screens tomorrow might not have such a big impact. Interested to see which film will take the top spot in the box office over the upcoming weekend

 

I'm curious as well but there's no doubt MAD MAX will do better in the long run. THE CHRONCIELS OF EVIL is pants and will drop like a stone after it opens. Even though MAD MAX is ahead in presales, CHRONICLES is the kind of film that won't have too many booking far ahead so it looks stronger now, but if WOM kicks in very fast for MAX (and it's great, so I imagine it will), it could take the weekend crown. Nothing massive though, maybe 550k?

[South Korea Box Office]

As I know, Okja is the monster's name in the film. Bong's new film is monster movie.

 

It's not a monster film, OKJA is the name of the lead character, a woman. I believe it's an action/thriller.

[South Korea Box Office]

Another promising title for you is Okja (working title). It's the next Bong joon-ho film (director of snowpiercer if you didn't know) and is set to be filmed in both New York and South Korea personally really interested in this.

 

I think you're right about the Colonial Era, we've got THE SILENCED next month, ASSASSINATION in the summer, FINGERSMITH (new Park Chan-wook) next year and SECRET AGENT (new Kim Jee-woon), also next year, to name just some heavy hitters.

 

HOW TO STEAL A DOG was quite good, and I know that Little Big Pictures, which is a production/distribution company that was set up as a collaboration between 10 prominent production companies to fight the vertically integrated studios, were very disappointed with the result. The director of the company (which is really a rotating position between the company heads) stepped down as a result. The film was re-released earlier this year, but barely added to its total. However, despite the relative size and health of the Korean industry, local kids film don't do well here and are rarely made. As a result, KOFIC (whose new chairman comes from an animation background) is aggressively trying to stimulate growth in this sector with grants, etc. but we'll see. That's still a market that the US (and to a lesser extent Japan) has a firm handle on here.

 

Bong Joon-ho is my absolute favorite filmmaker and I'm dying to see OKJA! Alas, there's no way it gets released before 2017.

[South Korea Box Office]

Nice analysis. On second thought I agree with what you say about Northern limit line, especially given that it opens on the same day as Jurassic world. Very interesting match-up right there. But I wouldn't rule it out completely just yet either. It's the kind of film that could post breaking out numbers if it connects with the general audience, the second battle of Yeonpyeong being a topic all Koreans can identify with after all, and the anticipation rating on Naver is currently very high. We'll see how it goes.

 

And yeah there are heavy hitters still to come but I think a recurring trend of the Korean box office is that we see a markedly decreasing number of middle sized hitters that come in around the 5-7 million admissions mark which is disappointing to see. A few films do insane numbers (when considering the size of the countries' population) while other films are left in the dust. In a way it's kind of like the Korean economy which is still driven in large extent by Chaboels while small-mid sized businesses struggle to survive. To stay competitive and fresh in the long term, the environment has to be set for middle sized hits to break out too. 

 

I agree about the mid-sized hits. That's how the industry worked for a good while but once CJ, Lotte and until recently Showbox, established a stranglehold on production, distribution and exhibition it's been slowly getting out of hand. CJ and Lotte, who were fined for antitrust breaches by the FTC last year, wait until something hits and artificially keep it up top.

 

There's also a terrible shortsightedness in the industry, which sees producers jump on a bandwagon when something scores. Right now that's period films (mostly Joseon Era fare). There's a number of them in various stages of production and the majority will probably lose money. Given that the base cost for those is KRW 10 billion (~$10 million), that's an awful lot of risky bets. After the failures of THE ROYAL TAILOR and EMPIRE OF LUST (DETECTIVE K 2, as a sequel, was less risky), a lot of companies are getting nervous. Later this year THE THRONE should do very well but the rest of the crop (THE TREACHEROUS, THE HYMN) look risky, then there's MEMORIES OF THE SWORD which looked like a sure thing until Lee Byung-hun's personal affairs derailed its release.

 

NEW was on a great run in 2013, when their mid-sized films dominated the charts (MIRACLE IN CELL NO. 7, NEW WORLD, MONTAGE, COLD EYES, HIDE AND SEEK and THE ATTORNEY) but they've been having a lot of trouble since. But we'll see, the industry is always in flux and it has traditionally been hard to predict the success of films. But I think there are some promising mid-sized films that could do well this year, such as OFFICE, GOKSEONG, JOURNALIST and HOME SWEET HOME, among others.

 

Sorry for the rant! It happens to be something that interests me quite a lot...

[South Korea Box Office]

After 7 very big days this steep drop seems pretty normal. It still has some gas in the tank mind and will come very close to 10 million by the end of Sunday. Beyond that, 12 million looks safe and it still has a chance of beating AVATAR. I don't think MAD MAX is going to eat away too much of its business on opening weekend, but given the film's strong reception it could dent it going forward with WOM, but it's too early to say.

 

As for Korean films, it's certainly been a rough year so far, particular as the local industry has seen it mainstream budgets spiral out of control. C'EST SI BON, CHRONICLE OF BLOOD MERCHANT and particularly EMPIRE OF LUST were all expensive writeoffs. Meanwhile GANGNAM BLUES (which I loved) felt short of expectations. The only really bright spot was TWENTY, which scored $21 million on a budget that was probably under $3 million. DETECTIVE K 2 may have made more money (around $27.5 million) but it probably cost around $10 million.

 

The heavy hitters are still ahead of us though as plenty of promising films will march into theaters in the coming months, particularly the late July-August period. I personally don't think NORTHERN LIMIT LINE will perform very well. The North Korea connection has often been box office gold in Korea but the interest in this pic is very low. Cast/director aren't particularly appealing and it just doesn't look very good. What I do think will post massive numbers is VETERAN, though it's unclear when it's being released. Most recently I heard June, but it's looking like it'll be July now. Which is a good time for it, but also runs the risk of going against ASSASSINATION, as both may eat into each other's business. The North Korea film that will do well later in the summer is the THE LONG WAY HOME.

[South Korea Box Office]

Not at all surprised by this number. It'll be well over 8 mil by Tuesday night and it still has a long way to go. I never said it here but I've been eyeing the 2nd place record for this. That's not a guarantee but I'm fairly sure this is going to outstrip AVATAR for the all-time foreign record at least. 

 

It should cross $100mil easily but $150mil is a pipe dream, won't come close to that.

[South Korea Box Office]

That's a solid number, but I'm also glad to see COIN LOCKER GIRL was able to nab 90k on its opening day. It's not enormous but given what it's up against it's encouraging. I was one of them yesterday and I liked it, but beyond the curiosity for its Cannes selection I don't think it's going to win over too many crowds.

[South Korea Box Office]

maybe its just a time of day thing as the tix are being used up going into the evening. y'all are really micromanaging this thing

 

Same thing every day, as tickets for evening shows are claimed, the pre-sales go more down than up until later in the evening when they start scaling up again. Same thing will happen tomorrow, and the number will likely peak early Friday. Could reach somewhere around 800k, considering the holidays.

[South Korea Box Office]

I'm still banking on this to be a weekend/resting day film. So..

Wed: 230K

Thur: 230K

Fri: 550K

Sat:750K

Sun:700K

Mon: 270K

Tue: 570K

Hopefully

 

Sounds good to me, but I think it'll go a little higher on Thursday and Monday!

[South Korea Box Office]

About Shrek 3 having the OD record, it's technically true but I'm also aware that many people in the box office business differentiate from a regular opening, so to speak, and a non-regular one such as those that open on a national holiday. Shrek 3 falls into the latter category in this case and I think the media was reflective of this although I did see news articles saying AoU was the second biggest OD among foreign releases later on. Speaking from a purely personal perspective, the fact that Shrek3 did 22% of its total business on its opening day seems frankly ridiculous and unprecedented as far as I know. So I don't really mind about the division.

And yes its almost a 5day holiday and I think some people even schedule to take a day off on monday to do just that. Numbers will be huge during this period of course but there's quite a lot of animated films targeted towards family sized audiences coming out and many will choose to go away on a trip if the weather is nice so its not entirely competition free. I think even with less screens and seats it would do well to reach last weekends saturation.

 

Yeah, that SHREK number was a freak, very strange box office run... 

 

You're right about the kids movies, lots of stuff programmed for Children's Day. Nothing really stands out but the sheer volume of them will grab a slice of the pie. That said, it was the same when A1 and IM3 were released and I think the kids going to see Marvel films skew a little older.

[South Korea Box Office]

Hello and welcome! Always nice to get different perspectives about the box office.

I'm of a similar mind as you when it comes to how the Korean box office behaves. I agree distribution practicises are biased towards big budget films, maybe more so than other countries but still I have to laugh when the press go crazy about AoU taking 80%+ screens and how its hurting the local film market, when it was those local films that scheduled their releases away from AoU. Also they stayed remarkably quiet when the same thing happened to GotG against RC last year..wonder why.

Also I agree that age of ultron will probably top 10 million admissions but in all likelihood, not much more than that. I think most of the disappointment some people are feeling on here stems from the fact that it could have done much much more, I've never seen the stage set more perfectly for a film. And yet those weekday numbers are undeniably weak. Only 17-18% seat saturation is not the hallmark of an event film (although admittedly it has more screens and seats than any other film in history).

 

Thanks for the welcome all!

 

I totally agree on the press going nuts here with these kinds of things but the media here displays a intense national bias and is typically ill-informed, so sadly it comes as no surprise. Fact-checking counts for nothing and editors will print anything. This is hardly limited to box office reporting but case in point, last week, many media outlets ran with the story that AVENGERS 2 scored the highest opening day for a foreign film in Korea. That record still belongs to SHREK 3 (at least in terms of admissions), but people didn't bother to check.

 

Regarding seat occupancy, yes 18% can seem low, but as you say nothing has every played so widely. That's 18% of 1.6 million seats, which we can compare to IRON MAN 3 on the same day with 22% of 1.2 million seats. Monday's total was also the biggest April Monday of all time (I think). IRON MAN 3 was bigger on Tuesday, but that was the day before Labor Day. This year that falls on Friday, which will soften the FFS drop and boost Thursday. There's also Children's Day on Tuesday, which in turn will boost Monday.

 

Today won't be huge but the following 6 days will be, and I think it'll be around 7.5 mil (if not more) by the end of Tuesday.

[South Korea Box Office]

Hey all, first time poster here. As a keen Korean box office observer, just wanted to weigh in on the discussion.

 

Reading a lot of talk of AVENGERS being some sort of disappointment, which I think is very far from the case. The weekdays are a touch low, true, but never has a film seen so much pre-release buzz in Korea. Unlike the US, where a film's success is measured in how slight its second weekend drop is (-40%, good/-70% bad), films in Korea either stick around for a few weeks with strong holds or crash immediately. It's a reflection of a sort of groupthink consumerism (that sounds bad, but I couldn't think of a better term) but also very unfair distribution practices. Anyway, getting back to the point, AVENGERS 2 is a front-loaded film like we've never seen here, due the massive popularity of the Marvel brand and also the heightened interest in location shooting.

 

The weekdays appear low compared to the big weekend numbers but to me it's like a short intermission following the release of pent-up demand. The pre-sales are still huge, people are enjoying the film, and exams are over/ending (kids really want to see this, and a lot of them will be going back for more). It has a clear run until May 14th, and even then I'm not sure that MAD MAX will draw big crowds in Korea, though local thriller CHRONICLES OF EVIL could drum up some business. No way this doesn't top 10 million.