Korea Weekend Box Office - March 23-25

300 continued its reign of terror this week, accounting for over 38% of all tickets sold and easily taking the No. 1 spot. The $3 million it took in over the weekend brings its 10-day total to around $12.7 million.

The second place film, PERFUME was a big surprise to me. I had barely heard of the movie before, although I have been quite enamored of its poster for the past few weeks.... Hrm, apparently the ignorance was mine. I bit of Googling revealed this was quite a big movie. The $65 million period movie has made over $120 million around the world. Mostly in Europe, though. Just $2.22 million in the United States since its release at the very end of 2006. In only three days in Korea, however, PERFUME pulled in around $2.1 million.

Jim Carrey's THE NUMBER 23 made about $1.3 million, good enough for third. Better than I might have guessed, considering the movie's reviews and how Carrey's films have rarely done well in Korea.

Jennifer Aniston's THE BREAK-UP opened quite tepidly in fourth.

Much more interesting is the No. 6 debut of MUG TRAVEL. Is this Korea's first computer 3D animated feature film? I think it is. Clips from MUG TRAVEL have been scattered around the Internet for quite some time now, and I cannot recall how many years I have seen segments at trade fairs. According to the movie website, MUG TRAVEL is the story of little Bebe, who gets a magical pendant one Christmas, then travels to magical lands in a big magic mug. Or something like that. The movie also features a bear named Backkom, but I do not know his relationship with Bebe. It looks well rendered, but I don't know about the story. I might check it out this weekend if it is still around. I am rather curious about it.


You can check out stills here. And clips of animation here. From the website, it looks like its creators, Aaron Lim and RG Animation, will be making more.

This Week	Title........................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Attendance (Seoul only)	Total Attendance
1.	300	3.14	318	191,900	1,912,500
2.	Perfume: The Story of a Murderer	3.22	232	85,200	317,600
3.	The Number 23	3.22	170	62,400	203,800
4.	The Break-up	3.22	150	46,000	132,000
5.	Lyrics and Music	2.28	131	35,400	984,900
6.	Soo	3.22	244	25,500	136,600
7.	Mug Travel	3.22	37	14,200	50,400
8.	The Illusionist	3.08	179	13,400	565,800
9.	Big Bang	3.14	237	10,600	332,300
10.	The Painted Veil	3.14	84	6,800	113,000

(Source: Film2.0)