NOTES ON ENTERTAINMENT, CULTURE AND MORE FROM KOREA (OR WHEREVER)

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Korea Weekend Box Office - May 16-18

Wow. Just one Korean film in the top-10 this week — BEASTIE BOYS (aka MOONLIGHT OVER SEOUL), way down in seventh. As people expected, Korean movies' share of the year's box office is plummeting rapidly, thanks to the onslaught of Hollywood summer blockbusters. Korean films are down to 43.8 percent of the box office, while American films have climbed to 43 percent. Those numbers are just going to get worse and worse over the next couple of months.

The top film last weekend was the latest Narnia movie, PRINCE CASPIAN, which had a decent (but not outstanding) $4.06 million opening. That works out to about 641,000 admissions, down slightly from the 716,000 admissions that THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE had in its opening weekend.

Close behind was IRON MAN, which pulled in another $2.8 million to bring its 19-day total to $24.04 million — or 3.7 million admissions.

After the big two, box office numbers decline fast. The next three films did okay, taking in $630,000-740,000. But after No. 5, the remaining films did not do much at all. BEASTIE BOYS made $170,000 to bring its total to $3.7 million.

THE CHASER is still around on a few screens around Korea. It was 17th last weekend, making a few thousand dollars over to bring its big total to $33.93 million (5.07 million admissions).

This WeekTitle............................................Release DateScreens NationwideWeekend Revenue (bil. won)Total Revenue (bil. won)
1.Prince Caspian 5.156703.564.06
2.Iron Man 4.305122.8124.04
3.Speed Racer 5.083670.744.84
4.Taken 4.092380.7115.05
5. Penelope 5.151600.630.80
6.Horton Hears a Who 4.302330.173.72
7.Beastie Boys (Korean) 4.301550.174.66
8.Forbidden Kingdom 4.241680.167.81
9.Priceless 5.081230.110.79
10.Detective Conan: Phantom of Baker Street 5.01280.0510.68
(Source: KOBIS - Figures represent 97% of nationwide box office)

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