South Korea Box Office

[abra]

 May 06, 2015

$1,001,859 -----133,142

($66,443,077)   --- (8,465,742)

 

 

 

http://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/jsp/news/boxOffice_Daily.jsp?mode=BOXOFFICE_DAILY

Edited May 6, 2015 by abra

[druv10]

lol, no panic. It was bound to happen with such crazy high weekdays. It's looking at 9.5-10M by Sunday and should finish between 12-13M admissions so no panic.   

[Silentknifezz]

lol, no panic. It was bound to happen with such crazy high weekdays. It's looking at 9.5-10M by Sunday and should finish between 12-13M admissions so no panic.   

after that long holiday and pretty high number,not surprised by that number,but still a little steep

Edited May 6, 2015 by Cy n

[Rsyu]

Wednesday Box Office (May 6) 

 

-Admissions (Total adm)  Daily%  Gross  (weekly%)    [sC]    {wk}   <Title>
 
1.   132,158    (8,464,758)  -81.4%  $994K    (-58.9%)    [1,522] {Wk3} <The Avengers: Age of Ultron> 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.     47,472       (907,035)  -63.6%  $342K    (-47.8%)     [532]   {Wk2} <Coin Locker girl> 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3.     17,393       (333,513)  -70.9%  $118K    (+5.38%)    [532]   {Wk2} <Enemy In-Law>  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.       6,814       (193,975)  -91.1%  $44K           (--)         [268]  {Wk2} <Dino Time> 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
5.       5,112       (179,792)  -92.4%  $33K           (--)         [255]  {Wk2} <Ooops! Noah is Gone>  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Total admissions: 238,905
Total Gross: $1,723,578
May Total: $42,053,132

Cumulative gross
The Avengers: Age of Ultron: $67.02 million

 

Current presales (Midnight)

01. 60.8% (87,228) The Avengers: Age of Ultron
02.   7.4% (10,653) Coin Locker Girl
03.   5.5%   (7,890) Love Clinic
04.   3.7%   (5,325) Mad Max: Fury Road
05.   2.2%   (2,864) Dino Time 

[Rsyu]

Brutal drop. 5 week holiday must have really deflated weekday numbers. 

[Sam]

Holidays skewing everything. I don't think we have made a quite accurate daily prediction since last weekend lol.

Like I said, 'erratic'

But close to 10M by Sunday sounds incredible still.

[Silentknifezz]

Brutal drop. 5 week holiday must have really deflated weekday numbers. 

hope thursday get a good bump ahead the weekends

[Rsyu]

My guess is weekdays probably won't recover and it'll play out like a weekend film from now onwards. 

[druv10]

Brutal drop. 5 week holiday must have really deflated weekday numbers. 

 

Clearly plus it looks like a weekend movie anyway so it should still have a strong weekend. 10M by Sunday is still very much possible. 

[Silentknifezz]

My guess is weekdays probably won't recover and it'll play out like a weekend film from now onwards. 

still it's not bad,from what i saw it not gonna collapse or something just bump up weekend enough to get close to 12-13M adm

[druv10]

My guess is weekdays probably won't recover and it'll play out like a weekend film from now onwards. 

 

Presales are still pretty high and it'll go up for another 2 days. My guess it does 500-550K on Saturday and 425-450K on Sunday.

[Fake]

I am thinking roughly:

Thurs: 120k

Fri: 210k

Sat: 490k

Sun: 430k

9.7M admissions by Sunday.

[Pypa94]

First time forecasting day adm ever for me (I thought why not ;p)

 

Thurday 131k

Friday 280k

Saturday 600k

Sunday 525k

 

1,405 M  Fri-Sun (-40%) hope it's really weekend movie

10M by Sunday !

[keysersoze123]

bombs away !!!!

 

On a serious note what matters is 8,464,758.

[dropsicaldackel]

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.

[Rsyu]

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.

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. 

Edited May 7, 2015 by Rsyu

[dropsicaldackel]

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...

Edited May 7, 2015 by dropsicaldackel

[Rsyu]

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...

 

Wow, again I'm very impressed with the depth of your knowledge on the Korean film industry. And yes, the big distributors/production companies are mostly to blame. They have an vested interest in putting up more screens/showtimes for the films they produced and as a result, you get a couple of films that dominate most of the screens. So even if people want to see a particular film, they can't find a screening of it easily. I think the most recent example of this that showed up on the media's radar (there are plenty that don't) was How to steal a dog. It got good reactions from the general audience but since it wasn't distributed by a big company, it got extremely low amount of showtimes and screens and the ones that it did manage to get were placed during bad hours. It's really too bad because I think the general quality of films are suffering as a result of this. We're getting too many big budgeted formulaic films now and quality isn't promoted enough. 

 

And yeah so sick of the Joseon Era films tbh, that theme has been literally wrung dry. The fatal encounter last year had me punching walls. I think if Assasins break out, the Japanese Colonial era theme could be their new thing. The last film of that kind to do big numbers was The good, the bad, and the weird which was way back in 2008. Already there's big budget films such as Dong-ju and Duk-hye ong-ju (덕혜옹주) in production which means Chungmuro may already be seeking to shift towards this new direction. 

[Sam]

Imma need a pen and paper to jot down all those promising Korean titles for future uses.

Thanks dropsicaldackel and Rsyu.

[Rsyu]

Imma need a pen and paper to jot down all those promising Korean titles for future uses.

Thanks dropsicaldackel and Rsyu.

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. Edited May 7, 2015 by Rsyu