Stream K-Dramas at OnDemandKorea

[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2017.07.14 ~ 2017.07.16

"Spider-Man" soars unchallenged, slow start for "Cars 3"...

Marvel's "Spider-Man: Homecoming" (starring Tom Holland) retained the top spot in Korea for a second weekend by capturing 64.36% of the sales from 1781 screens. The 1.4 million admissions it claimed swelled the reboot's total tally to 5.9 million ($42.7 million), making it the second-highest grossing film of the year behind "Confidential Assignment" (7.8 million), as well as the highest grossing foreign film ahead of "Beauty and the Beast" (5.1 million). Worldwide, "Spider-Man: Homecoming" has already brought in $469 million.

Advertisement

The third instalment of Pixar and Disney's "Cars" was the highest new entry. From 800 screens, "Cars 3" settled in second with 266,766 admissions (10.88%), pushing last weekend's number two, "Anarchist from Colony", down one notch. Lee Joon-ik's "Anarchist from Colony" has been on the charts for three weeks now; it opened in first with 817,965 (48.74%), then fell to second with 328,160 when "Spider-Man" entered the fray, and this past weekend it added another 206,323 (8.95%) for a total of 2.2 million admissions, or $15 million. Currently, "Anarchist from Colony" is the twentieth highest-grossing film of the year.

Two older foreign films made it onto the top ten this week: Rob Reiner's 2010 romantic drama "Flipped" (starring Madeline Carroll and Callan McAuliffe, and based on Wendelin Van Draanen's young adult novel of the same name) and the second part of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy, "The Dark Knight" (with Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger), occupied fourth (102,917, 4.7%) and sixth place (40,888, 1.91%) respectively. Between them with 56,905 admissions (2.53%) entered "Maudie", an Irish-Canadian biographical drama about folk artist Maud Lewis (1903~1970).

Jon Gunn's "The Case for Christ" (inspired by Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christianity Answer Book") was given 216 screens and captured 1.39% of the sales, or 33,751 admissions ($226,817); the film was released in America back in April and has grossed $14.7 million worldwide. Bong Joon-ho's fantastical action-adventure "Okja" has been plagued by a screen shortage as a result of an ongoing disagreement with Korea's top distributors. But despite its low screen count, Bong's second English-language film remained in the top ten, adding another 29,852 admissions (1.24%) to move its bottom line in Korea to $1.79 million.

"Transformers: The Last Knight", reportedly Michael Bay's final film in the series, plummeted this week, falling from third to ninth with just 20,229 admissions (0.86%). Since its release in Korea on June 21, "The Last Knight" has amassed 2.6 million admissions ($18.9 million), 20,229 of which came from this past weekend. Worldwide, this fifth instalment has accumulated $515 million. The final place went to "Fantastic Short Films 1", the first short film compilation from the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, which attracted 13,000 admissions from a small number of screenings at the 21st edition of the festival.

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2017.07.14 - 2017.07.16 (www.kobis.or.kr)

# Films Release date Week-end Total
1 "Spider-Man: Homecoming"   1 416 960 5 901 940
2 "Cars 3"   266 779 288 576
3 "Anarchist from Colony" (박열) 2017/06/28 206 455 2 211 730
4 "Flipped"   102 995 134 630
5 "Maudie"   57 063 85 999
6 "The Dark Knight"   40 923 4 148 762
7 "The Case for Christ"   33 768 47 752
8 "Okja" (옥자) 2017/06/29 29 792 267 841
9 "Transformers: The Last Knight"   20 242 2 606 765
10 "Fantastic Short Film Masterpiece 1" (판타스틱 단편 걸작선 1)   13 000 17 000
Korean movies only  
  "A Taxi Driver" (택시 운전사) 2017/08/02 7 219 37 211
  "Our President" (노무현입니다) 2017/05/25 2 829 1 847 852
  "The Villainess" (악녀) 2017/06/08 1 925 1 207 072
  "The Day After - 2017" (그 후) 2017/07/06 1 918 15 249
  "Real" (리얼) 2017/06/28 1 466 461 874
  "The Merciless" (불한당: 나쁜 놈들의 세상) 2017/05/17 617 934 434
  "Ash Flower" (재꽃) 2017/07/06 565 3 417
  "Farming Boys" (파밍 보이즈) 2017/07/13 565 1 643
  "Midnight Runners" (청년경찰) 2017/08/09 401 401
  "All Live, Olive" (올 리브 올리브) 2017/07/13 271 1 401

- Christopher Wheeler

❎ Try Ad-free