Fish&chips

Mission Impossible Series Box office 1. Mission Impossible (1996) -OW: N/A -Admissions (national): N/A -Admissions (seoul): 622,237 -Gross: $10,581,446 2. Mission Impossible 2 (2000) -OW: N/A -Admissions (national): N/A -Admissions (seoul): 1,230,633 -Gross: $13,587,885 3. Mission Impossible 3 (2006) -OW: 998,889 admissions -Admissions (national): 5,740,789 -Admissions (seoul): 1,584,202 -Gross: $37,618,495 4. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) -OW: 1,449,544 admissions -Admissions (national): 7,575,899 -Admissions (seoul): 2,347,164 -Gross: $41,600,001 5. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015) -OW: 1,989,552 admissions -Admissions (national): 6,125,488 -Admissions (seoul): 1,669,524 -Gross: $51,069,827 6. Mission Impossible: Fallout -OW: 2,304,557 admissions -Admissions (national): 6,584,915 -Admissions (seoul): 1,686,255 -Gross: $49,794,614 Tom Cruise last week came to South Korea to promote MI:Dead Reckoning Pt.1, fulfilling a promise he made one year ago when he came to promote Top Gun: Maverick. Tom Cruise is arguably South Korea's favourite Hollywood actor having visited a total of 11 times to promote his movies ever since he came to promote Interview with the Vampire in 1994. Koreans love him for his amazing fan service, where he will often stay to sign the autographs of fans for several hours as well as his history of coming to Korea to promote his films on such a frequent basis. Dead reckoning pt.1 has the platform to perform really well. Previously, Rogue Nation and Fallout, although it did quite well, suffered somewhat from being released during late July where it was directly pit against 10M admissions plus juggernauts. Top Gun: Maverick last year managed 8,177,446 admissions when it was released on June 22nd to minimal competition. Dead reckoning will be looking to hopefully replicate that formula and perhaps to surpass it.

Yeah it seems like the BO manipulation took the form of selling out shows for those films during post-midnight hours, which the distributors are saying they did as a test run for future midnight showing events. Which is total bull but knowing how the law works in Korea they'll probably get away with it with a fine or something. Bias from the Korean film industry towards Korean titles is nothing new, they just took it to the next level. If foreign releases weren't so popular with the general public the imbalance would be much greater.

If they did inflate numbers it will be for Korean movies only most likely. Korean film industry insiders have this weird thing where they feel the necessity for Korean films to perform better than foreign imports. And with Korean films doing so terribly over the past few years, I don't think there's any motivation to artificially inflate BO numbers for foreign films. Sad thing is they probably could have achieved more business if they decreased the ticket price a little or had more discount events. A lot of people nowadays just prefer to watch netflix with friends at home rather than going out to watch overpriced average films in the theater.

The Korean film industry as a whole is in a bit of a crisis moment. Business has been severely down since covid and it's never fully recovered even though social restrictions have been lifted for a year at this point. And so the entire movie industry is facing a lot of scrutiny as a result. Which is why on the one hand I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to try to inflate their numbers. On the other hand, the numbers that have been reported to date have been pretty dire so it makes you wonder how much lower the actual numbers were (if they really did artificially inflate numbers). Pre-pandemic going to the movie theater was a staple activity for a lot of Koreans. But with new streaming platforms exploding in popularity during the lockdowns, many people are saying that the average moviegoer's taste and preferences have shifted a lot to watching movies that "need to be seen on the big screen". A category which many Korean movies are not seen to fall into. The rapid increase in ticket price could be another factor that is turning people away from casual movie watching

2023 Korean Box Office Summer Tentpole Films 1. Smugglers (밀수) *Date: July 26th *Budget: 13M USD (17.6B KRW) *Break Even point (In Admissions: 4M) *Analysis: Set in the 1970s, the story revolves around a crime of a haenyeo who gets caught up in smuggling against the background of a peaceful small sea village. After the failure of his film The battleship Island in 2017, Director Rye Seung wan returned with the critically acclaimed film Escape from Mogadishu in 2021. There's a lot of interest centered on how the two top female leads Kim Hey su and Yeom Jung ah will perform together. 2. The Moon (더문) *Date: August 2nd *Budget: 22M USD (28.6B KRW) *Break Even point (In Admissions: 6M) *Analysis: Kim Yong-hwa, the director of the Along with the gods series the only sequential films that have both achieved 10M admissions in Korea, returns with a space Sci-fi Film titled the Moon. There's a lot of concerns surrounding this movie as space-themed Sci-fi movies have not done so well recently (Space Sweepers, The Silent Sea, Jung_E to name a few), and director Kim is sometimes known to overdramatize his films which may not be the best compatible factor for a sci-fi movie. Korean movies aren't known for good visual effects, but Dexter Studios, which collaborated on the film Mr. Go worked on this film so it'll be interesting to see how well they manage to pull that off. 3. Concrete Utopia (콘크리트 유토피아) *Date: August (TBD) *Budget: ~15M USD (~20B KRW) *Break Even point (In Admissions: 3.5~4M) *Analysis: Concrete Utopia is Lotte Entertainments first foray into an attempted Apocalypse Universe franchise. If it's successful, Lotte seeks to continue to create films that share the same apocalyptic universe. The film itself is based on a Korean webtoon called Happy Boy (유쾌한 왕따) and depicts survivors gathering together in the only apartment that remains standing after a devastating earthquake in Seoul. There are already IP's lined up should this film prove to be successful and so a lot of people are hoping that this one will be a big success. Climax studio, which created the acclaimed Netflix Series <DP> and <Hellbound> worked on this movie and The director's previous film <Vanishing Time: A boy who returned> Was also critically acclaimed so there is reasons to be optimistic 4. Unofficial Operation (비공식작전) *Date: August (TBD) *Budget: ~25M USD (~30B KRW) *Break Even point (In Admissions: ~6M) *Analysis: Unofficial Operation is an action thriller film that follows a Korean diplomat who travels to Lebanon to locate his missing colleague and while he's there he teams up with taxi driver Pansu who helps him in his mission. From the synopsis the film has a very <Escape from Mogadishu> or <A Taxi Driver> feel to it. And with Kim Sung-hoon, the director of hugely successful films and TV series such as <A Hard Day>, <Tunnel> and Netflix's <Kingdom> many people are very anticipatory of this film.

Top 10 Biggest November releases (Admissions: 2004~) 01. 13,747,792 Frozen 2 (2019) 02. 10,326,240 Interstellar (2014) 03, 7,072,021 Inside Men (2015) 04. 5,462,953 2012 (2009) 05. 5,442,553 The Priests (2015) 06. 4,802,602 My Love Don't Cross that River (2014) 07. 4,667,179 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) 08. 4,018,341 The Swindlers (2017) 09. 3,754,983 Default (2018) 10. 3,038,868 Le Grand Chef (2007) Top 10 Biggest November OW (Admissions: 3 day) 01. 3,829,951 Frozen 2 (2019) 02. 1,663,001 Interstellar (2014) 03. 1,417,061 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) 04. 1,406,039 The Priests (2015) 05. 1,316,794 2012 (2009) 06. 1,261,073 Inside Men (2015) 07. 1,212,288 The Swindlers (2017) 08. 1,069,762 Default (2018) 09. 1,067,347 Friends: The Great Legacy (2013) 10. 1,023,140 Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindlewald (2018)

Unless I'm mistaken it's a promotional event by the SK government to revitalize the economy. They're providing various discount programs in 9 different sectors including restaurants, hotels, gyms membership etc.

Ticket prices have really gone up over the covid period. The theatre chains cited that it was necessary to continue to do business I wonder, if they start to generate pre-covid BO numbers again, whether they'll lower the price again? (Sarcasm, of course they won't)

All the major chains (CGV, Lotte Cinema, Megabox) doing a promotional event this week to encourage movie going. Up to 2 tickets available per person this week at a 6000 KRW discount (around 5 USD). Should bump admissions.

Updated guidelines on social distancing is out as the SK government seeks to implement a "with coronavirus" lifestyle. In broad strokes, it will be a staggered implementation over 3 stages all told, with incremental easing of restriction as each stage is successfully carried through. Each respective stage will constitute of 4 weeks of implementation and 2 weeks of reviewing (whatever that means) so 6 weeks in total. I assume this also means that each stage might be extended depending on the trend of covid spread. So just to focus in the immediate term, what stage 1 of "with coronavirus" would look like for movie theatres would be: a) No restrictions on time b) Allow separate seating section inside the theatres for eating food (which was not allowed previously), only if you're vaccinated. c) Allow fully vaccinated people to sit together. Government is really going for the two tier citizenship system with the vaccine passports it seems But this does seem like a proper thawing of the Box Office and it should encourage more people to watch movies in theatres going forwards.

Box office bump for Dune down to culture day where CGV sells discounted tickets on the last wednesday of the month. This is evidenced by the fact that while admissions rose 70.5% over the day before, gross only rose by 29.7%. Most likely thursday will be closer to tuesday numbers, if not a little less. If Dune does hold better than expected then yeah, we can point to word of mouth as the reason. I also disagree that Eternals will have zero restrictions. It will have less than Black Widow of course, but I highly doubt the government will throw all restrictions out the window come November. Most likely it will be a staggered lifting.

Eternals does benefit from having Ma dong seok, who is hugely popular in SK as well as being Marvel of course. As with any movie though ultimately legs would make or break it but I'd think something in the Black Widow range would be considered a success for it. There are numerous factors in play here that I find interesting, such as the public interest of Korea-based Ma Dong Seok having a larger role in the MCU. Assuming he has an interesting role that generates positive word of mouth for movie goers, it might be fair to say that he would be a bigger draw than Scarlett Johansson in BW, although the latter character is much more familiar to the MCU loving Korean audience. Ma Dong Seok often headlines films in Korea and is a box office draw in his own right. BW was also released at the traditionally strong Box Office month of July, although that coincided with pretty severe lockdowns. Eternals on the other hand will be released in a less regulated box office environment, but in a month that is traditionally weak for the box office (Interstellar etc aside). It's unclear how the effects of that will play out but I guess we'll find out Also, it's not quite sure what form the alleviation of social distancing restrictions set to start from Nov. 1 will take but from what I'm seeing it will most likely be related to time and not physical space. By which I mean that movie theatres will still place restrictions on seating, placing a natural upper limit of 50% or so on seat-capacity per showtime. They may ease regulations going forwards maybe but Eternals may not benefit from relaxed social distancing regulations for seating.

The Korean government has extended the current level four restrictions till the end of October. Starting from yesterday (Oct 18th) however, they have extended the finishing time of theaters from 10pm to 12am, a restriction that had been set in place for the past 3 months. It should be interesting to see what effect (if any) this has on box office numbers.

Korean government has said that November would be the date where society would open up more as we learn to "live with Corona". Might be good news for the box office. Looking forward to Dune and how it will play in Korea

I don't know if it's been discussed already but with the social distancing measures, movie goers are currently unable to sit next to each other (have to sit one seat over) which kind of defeats the idea of going to watch movies "together" not to mention the fact that every showtime has a maximum cap of 50% seat capacity. Wearing a mask throughout is a given of course. Oh and for some bizarre reason, they still sell popcorn at all the chains but they ban popcorn eating inside the actual theater. One of the more idiotic decisions made by the major movie chains among a string of idiotic decisions. All of which is contributing to people being turned off from movies in South Korea. Lack of a "must-see" film isn't helping either. Regarding Shang Chi, I've seen more buzz online over the recent Spiderman trailer than at the release of Shang-Chi