Korea Weekend Box Office - Oct. 26-28

A disappointing opening for Lee Myung-se's new film M, making its debut only in third place. That works out to about $1.89 million since its release Thursday night (the KOFIC chart claims it opened on the 26th, but I am certain it was in theaters on Thursday evening). Looks like M will be hard pressed to get to 1 million admissions, let alone the 1.2 million admissions that DUELIST had.

Most of the rest of the top 10 is basically the same as last week. Top film once again is GOING BY THE BOOK, which took in $2.9 million over the weekend to raise its total boxoffice to something over $8 million.

SHADOWS IN THE PALACE took the second spot again, with $1.8 million over the weekend and a total boxoffice of just less than $7 million.

COPYING BEETHOVEN still going strong in sixth after three weeks.

Most shockingly bad opening in quite some time goes to PUNCH LADY, which had just 22,000 admissions (about $150,000) despite appearing on 240 screens. That does not even come close to paying for 240 prints, never mind the production costs and advertising.

This Week	Title............................................	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Attendance	Total Attendance
1.	Going by the Book (Bareuge Salja - Korean)	10.18	402	421,500	1,173,875
2.	Shadows in the Palace (Gungneo - Korean)	10.18	381	266,723	989,715
3.	M (Korean)	10.26	451	229,919	276,336
4.	Resident Evil 3	10.18	253	116,701	416,109
5.	Love Exposure (Eokkae Neomeo-ui Yeonin - Korean)	10.18	247	56,036	251,796
6.	Copying Beethoven	10.11	101	30,123	239,095
7.	Tokyo Tower (Japan)	10.25	71	25,211	28,901
8.	Happiness (Haengbok - Korean)	10.03	209	23,070	1,178,201
9.	Rush Hour 3	10.03	134	22,780	776,106
10.	Punch Lady (Peonchi Reidi - Korean)	10.25	240	21,441	25,863

(Source: KOBIS - Figures represent 97% of nationwide box office)

Interestingly, KOBIS claims its boxoffice tracking now covers 97 percent of screens in Korea. That is pretty close to complete. Nice to see the KOBIS system finally getting near total compliance.

Korean movies now have 51.1 percent of the year's boxoffice. Hollywood is down to 43.2 percent. Quite a change in fortunes from July, when Hollywood was outpacing Korea.