Korea Weekend Box Office - May 23-25

This Week.........Title............................................................................Tickets Sold............................Total Tickets Sold
1............Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull..(USA)............1,396,175................................1,616,470
2............The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.(USA)..............................302,599................................1,085,681
3............Iron Man (USA).............................................................................205,284................................4,077,630
4............Never Back Down (USA).................................................................54,325....................................63,748
5............Taken (France)..............................................................................36,119..................................2,325,772
6............Penelope (USA).............................................................................32,231....................................195,520
7............Speed Racer (USA)........................................................................20,162....................................794,137
8............Nallari Jongbujeon -(Frivolous Wife) (Korean).....................................14,103.....................................16,393
9...........Horton Hears a Who (USA)................................................................5,290....................................634,129
10.........Detective Conan: Phantom of Baker Street (Japan)...............................3,152...................................122,273

Well I have no idea how to comment how bad it was for the Korean Film industry last week. The only thing good is that after UIP Korea split up, Paramount has, Korean Company CJ Entertainment, release their films in Korea. I do not know the split of profits, but with Paramount having the the #1 and #4 film in Korea, it can not be hurting CJ.

In the 3 years since I have been covering the Korean film market, I have never seen this bad of a result of Total Korean Tickets sold for the week. To put #8 in real numbers, it opened on 196 screens and for the weekend sold 14,103, thats about 72 seats per screen, over a 3 day weekend. That is a complete and total failure.

For the year Korean films have about 42-43% of the total number of tickets sold in Korea. The next few weeks do not look much better for them. Until, "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" gets released this summer, it looks like a very bad Summer 2008 for Korean Films.

until