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[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2014.07.04 ~ 2014.07.06

"Divine" intervention almost topples Bay's beast...

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Micheal Bay's blockbusting "Transformers: Age of Extinction" managed to hold onto the top spot despite some serious local protest. Bay's latest was the sole star last weekend where it opened its Korean account with over 1.8M admissions, but the mech-monster was challenged here by a new entry in the form of Jo Beom-goo's "The Divine Move".

There was only a 35K difference between "Transformers" (960K – 40%) and "The Divine Move" (925K – 38%), even though the former had 300 more screens from which to pool from. "Transformers" has raced onto 4.1M admissions ($34.6M) in just two weeks, making it now the fifth highest grossing film of the year just behind "Edge of Tomorrow" (4.6M). Worldwide, "Transformers: Age of Extinction" has thus far grossed an incredible $575M.

Jo Beom-goo's newest entry "The Divine Move" came out slugging though, and over its allocated 789 screens it nearly managed a million admissions and the honour of humbling Bay's massive money-maker. Beom-goo's last film "Quick" performed well back in 2003 (attracting over 3.1M) and he'll be hoping that "The Divine Move" will have the endurance to performed even better than that fast-paced action outing.

In third place came another new Korean entry, this time a seasonal horror flick by debutant Oh In-chun. "Mourning Grave" attracted 216K (8.1%) over 455 screens to give the local representation in the top ten some impetus. In-cheon's promising opening act helped push "Edge of Tomorrow" down to fourth with 125K (4.9%), while Kim Seong-hun's drama "A Hard Day" fell to fifth with 114K to its name (4.5%).

The American comedy "Bad Neighbors" (simply "Neighbors" back in the U.S.) marked the second watershed in the charts as it only managed 18K (0.78%), but that modest haul was enough to outplay the Swedish film "The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared" (13K) which fell two places to seventh.

The biopic "Grace of Monaco" also took a two-step tumble from last weekend's effort. Olivier Dahan's film added just 10K to bring its total tally in Korea now to 216K. Lastly, this past weekend's top ten was rounded out by "Beauty and the Beast" (7.9K) and the critically acclaimed "Her" (7.6K) which has been a regular feature in the top ten now for an impressive seven weeks.

 

What's coming out next week in Korea? [HanCinema's Film News] New Korean Films Inbound...

Last weekend's report: [HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2014.06.27 ~ 2014.06.29

 

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2014.07.04 - 2014.07.06 (www.kobis.or.kr)

# Films Release date Week-end Total
1 "Transformers: Age of Extinction"   960 626 4 156 866
2 "The Divine Move" (신의 한수) 2014/07/03 925 685 1 181 091
3 "Mourning Grave" (소녀괴담) 2014/07/03 216 365 293 561
4 "Edge of Tomorrow"   125 069 4 599 936
5 "A Hard Day" (무덤까지 간다) 2014/05/29 114 092 3 331 683
6 "Bad Neighbours"   18 663 26 316
7 "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" (Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann)   13 027 223 292
8 "Grace of Monaco"   10 260 216 219
9 "Beauty and the Beast" (La Belle et La Bête)   7 938 311 050
10 "Her"   7 648 309 242
Korean movies only  
  "BLACKDEAL" (블랙딜) 2014/07/03 1 477 5 040
  "One Night Only" (원나잇온리) 2014/07/03 644 1 740
  "Gyeongju" (경주) 2014/06/12 634 59 446
  "The Sino-Japanese War and Queen Min the Heroine" (청일전쟁과 여걸 민비, 1965) - Re-release   302 478
  "Futureless Things" (이것이 우리의 끝이다) 2014/06/26 280 2 298
  "For The Emperor" (황제를 위하여) 2014/06/12 229 591 352
  "Let's Dance" (자, 이제 댄스타임) 2014/06/26 166 868
  "Navigation" (내비게이션) 2014/07/03 133 407
  "The Love Marriage" (자유 결혼, 1958) - Re-release   105 105
  "Obsessed" (인간중독) 2014/05/14 54 1 441 313

 

- C.J. Wheeler (chriscjw@gmail.com@KoreaOnTheCouch)

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