KBO: The Thieves Steals First Place in Grand Fashion (07/27-07/29, 2012)

The Thieves Steals First Place in Grand Fashion

Apologies for this abbreviated Box Office Report, all updates were suspended while MKC covered the 16th PiFan.

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	The Thieves	7/25/12	55.30%	2,004,178	2,866,802	1,073
2	The Dark Knight Rises (us)	7/19/12	25.30%	891,004	4,256,255	807
3	Ice Age 4 (us)	7/25/12	10.60%	359,122	470,762	501
4	Horror Stories	7/25/12	2.60%	91,890	141,071	274
5	Deranged	7/5/12	2.00%	75,898	4,411,340	261
6	Detective Conan (jp)	7/19/12	1.70%	72,203	329,882	211
7	Doraeman (jp)	7/25/12	1.10%	45,187	58,340	180
8	The Amazing Spiderman (us)	6/28/12	0.30%	9,572	4,840,651	45
9	Midnight in Paris (us)	7/5/12	0.20%	8,143	293,979	38
10	SeoTaiji Record of the 8th	7/27/12	0.20%	5,326	5,326	1

Last weekend set an unprecedented bar at the local box office but that has just been obliterated by this past frame which featured two behemoths lifting the box office to an accumulated 3.62 million admissions, which was 50% higher than last year but most significantly, nearly 20% over last week's record-setting performance. Even better news was the soaring market share as local films captured 60% of the busy frame's business.

The Thieves came within inches of Transformer 3's record opening but, at 2,004,178, it is by far the largest opening for a Korean film on record. The dailies have been exceptionally strong and even at this early stage it is safe to say that this will be the biggest film of the year and a very strong contender for the vaunted 10 million mark. No big releases next weekend means that The Thieves looks set to repeat at the top.

The Dark Knight Rises fell 55% but still captured an enormous 891,004 viewers in its second frame, lifting its total well over the 4 million mark. It should cross its next milestone next weekend and will likely reach another but may fall short of topping The Avengers.

Ice Age 4, in the face of stiff competition, had a solid opening with 359,122 and should play well over the coming weeks during the height of the holiday season.

Horror Stories, which premiered last week at PiFan, had a meagre opening with 91,890 while Deranged took another big slide for 75,898. 5 million is now well out of reach.

The Thieves will have no trouble staying afloat next weekend, the only question is how big will it be?

Source: kobis.or.kr


The Korean Box Office Update is a weekly feature which provides detailed analysis of film box office sales over the Friday to Sunday period in Korea. It appears every Sunday night (Korean Standard Time) on Modern Korean Cinema. For other weekly features, take a look at Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.