왕의 남자 (The King and The Clown) = Super Hit in the Making?
Lee Joon-Ik strikes again? Too early to tell, but it seems his latest work 왕의 남자 (The King and The Clown) set the box office on fire on its first day of release. After doing great in pre-order sales all week long, the film debuted yesterday along with Yoon Jong-Chan's 청연 (Blue Swallow), and its result raised quite a few eyebrows: 200,000 tickets in one day. Not too impressed? OK, let's see: Kwak Kyung-Taek's 태풍 (Typhoon) was released on 540 screens and sold 280,000 tickets nationwide on its opening day; 'The King and The Clown' had less than HALF the screens to sell all those tickets, with a mere 255. 'Typhoon' cost 20 Billion, and Lee made this film for 4.4 Billion Won... so that should tell you something.
Now, you could envision two possible scenarios: the film gets more screens after its first weekend (which should be around the Million tickets, if things continue this way) and goes on to become a big hit, or it continues to do pretty well despite having a 'normal' release. All this is thanks to word of mouth, which has sky-rocketed after the first day of release, fueled in part by extremely positive reviews. Another small factor which could make this film a big hit is the newfound popularity of one of its stars, Lee Joon-Gi, whose homepage scored 100,000 hits yesterday, and has been the most searched name on various Korean portals for the last week.
So the underdog is winning alone against the big ape, the 20 Billion Korean potboiler, and even a well received biopic. Those three takes per scene didn't go in vain, Director Lee...
