Korean Box Office: About Time Tops Slow Weekend

Slow weekend for local releases with only 26% of the 1.62 million admissions going to domestic industry. Things were much rosier this time last year with 75% of 1.95 million admissions going to Korean films.

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	About Time (uk)	12/5/13	29.50%	477,262	569,878	568
2	Insidious: Chapter 2 (us)	12/5/13	13.30%	225,734	273,148	405
3	11:00 AM	11/28/13	9.40%	158,976	784,348	415
4	Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (us)	11/21/13	8.60%	153,167	664,905	409
5	Marriage Blue	11/21/13	7.80%	128,680	1,097,786	358
6	Escape Plan (us)	12/5/13	6.80%	112,354	133,194	287
7	Hunger Games: Catching Fire (us)	11/21/13	5.90%	98,067	1,050,799	315
8	Friend 2	11/14/13	4.90%	78,392	2,920,249	331
9	Tumbleweed	11/28/13	3.70%	59,322	404,919	298
10	Ohsin (jp)	12/5/13	1.30%	22,577	58,485	233

Working Title had a strong opening with their new romantic film About Time which scored 477,262 admissions. Later this month, the company's 2003 hit Love Actually will go on release in Korea. Horror sequel Insidious: Chapter 2 also opened well with 225,734, a significant improvement on its 2011 predecessor.

Looking at holdovers, local sci-fi 11:00 AM dived 58% for 158,976 admissions and is now in serious danger of missing the one million mark, a very disappointing result. Animated sequel Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 dipped just 20% for 153,167. Closing out the top five was omnibus romcom Marriage Blue with 128,680 as it crossed the one million mark.

Next week, hotly anticipated local release Way Back Home, from director Pang Eun-jin and starring Jeon Do-yeon and Ko Soo, will go head to head with the second installment of The Hobbit. The first was a reasonable success with almost three million admissions but local competition from Jeon Do-yeon and co. will be stiff.

Source: KOBIS

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 Korean Reviews. Reviews and features on Korean film also appear regularly on the site. 

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