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

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Korea Weekend Box Office - Feb. 16-19

Another holiday Monday, another extra day to juice the box office. Seollal (Lunar New Year), however, is not a big movie-going holiday, especially this year when it fell on a Sunday, minimizing the amount of free time people would have (most people spent Sunday and/or Monday in the car, coming and going to their families).

Nevertheless, a pretty big wave of new releases hit this weekend, opening to ride the holiday to a little extra revenue. A full six of the top 10 films this week are new releases.

Ha Ji-won's MIRACLE ON 1ST STREET landed in the top spot this week, taking in just under 1 million admissions, or about $6.5 million, from its early Wednesday night opening until the end of Monday (which is much closer to an opening week than weekend).

No. 2 went to Cha Tae-hyun's HIGHWAY STAR, where he played an aspiring rocker turned trot star in a wrestling mask. Is anyone else as annoyed by this manufactured trot comeback as I am? I have been known to enjoy a little ppongjjak music from time to time, but the sudden flurry of press and other trot-related product feels really forced and artificial to me.

VOICE OF A MURDERER is nearing the 3-million-attendance mark, which is not too shabby at all.

FLAG OF OUR FATHERS was the biggest foreign film, coming in at No. 5 overall (up nicely from its No. 7 early projection), with a little over $1 million in revenue. Undoubtedly MASTER KIMS performed better nationwide, though. I was almost tempted to go see ROCKY BALBOA, which opened in No. 7... but only almost.

I was nicely surprised by the success of THE QUEEN. Always good to see Helen Mirren doing well, thanks to a little Oscar buzz (at a guess). So was that the first movie ever in which Ms Mirren did not get nude?

What the heck is a Terabithia?

And, amazingly enough, 200 POUND BEAUTY finally fell out of the top 10 (it was No. 11). YOBI, THE FIVE-TAILED FOX was twelfth.

This WeekTitle........................................Release DateScreens NationwideWeekend Attendance (Seoul only)Total Attendance
1.Miracle on 1st Street2.14390207,000962,000
2.Highway Star2.14332128,900646,900
3.A Day for an Affair2.08326127,5001,389,900
4.Voice of a Murderer1.3128592,0002,961,000
5.Flag of Our Fathers2.1510258,900151,100
6.Master KIMs2.0829456,700915,200
7.Rocky Balboa2.1420151,800170,200
8.Bridge to Terabithia2.1513443,000193,200
9.The Queen2.154321,60043,300
10.Charlotte's Web2.0812918,000250,000

(Source: Film2.0)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Mark,

Any idea what happened to Little Children? Most of the sites I check say it was set to come out here February 15th, and I can't find a trace of it. Daum.net's movie listings don't show it playing anywhere. Could it have come out and only stuck around for a single week?