Korea Weekend Box Office - March 30-April 1

Sorry I am a little late with this week's box office. The Korea-US Free Trade Agreement and about a hundred other things have me pretty busy these days. Write in to get a full refund if the delay in any way inconvenienced you.

Anyhow, a fun race for the top spot this week. According to Film 2.0, 300 won for the third week in a row in Seoul, by just 100 admissions -- 116,100 admissions to 116,000. That works out to about $782,278 for 300 and $781,600 for SMALLTOWN RIVALS.

Nationwide, however, SMALLTOWN RIVALS won quite handily, besting 300 by nearly $1 million ($3.00 million vs. $2.18 million). Or 440,516 admissions to 317,538. (Remembering, as always, that the KOBIS nationwide stats amount to only about 93% of the total box office, so the real difference was probably even greater).

So far in 2007, 300 is the third-biggest film of the year, having earned about $16 million, following VOICE OF A MURDERER and MIRACLE ON FIRST STREET (and it looks pretty certain that 300 will overtake MIRACLE in the next week).

New films BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY and BLACK BOOK had modest openings. Nothing to write home about, though.

This Week	Title........................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Attendance (Seoul only)	Total Attendance
1.	300	3.14	279	116,100	2,431,300
2.	Smalltown Rivals	3.29	325	116,000	530,000
3.	Perfume: The Story of a Murderer	3.22	231	71,400	664,300
4.	The Number 23	3.22	170	38,700	373,600
5.	Beautiful Sunday	3.29	215	29,800	105,700
6.	Black Book	3.29	134	26,400	81,300
7.	The Break-up	3.22	150	24,000	202,000
8.	Lyrics and Music	2.28	119	18,500	1,072,300
9.	Mug Travel	3.22	39	6,800	84,000
10.	Soo	3.22	231	6,300	206,000

(Source: Film2.0)

This week will see the opening of the new Song Gang-ho film THE SHOW MUST GO ON, which looks like it is going to get a massive rollout. The Megabox in my neighborhood is going to have three or four of its eight screens showing that movie. And it has been getting some decent reviews (although the trailers have been leaving me cold).

Kim Ki-duk's latest, BREATH, comes out in a couple more weeks. The press preview was last Friday, but I promised the production house I would not review it before the release date (apparently The Korea Herald did not get that memo). I do not want to ruin it for you but I will give one big spoiler here. BREATH features something never seen before in any Kim Ki-duk film -- smiling.

Not to keep yapping on about THE HOST, but its run in the United States seems to be going surprisingly well. In the 25 days since its release, THE HOST has now made $1.48 million, and it seems to be picking up steam. The number of screens showing the movie has gone up again, to 116 (it opened on 71, and climbed to 94 last week).