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[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2016.12.30 ~ 2017.01.01

"Master" marches into 2017 over "Rouge One"...

After an impressive opening over Christmas weekend, Cho Ui-seok's crime thriller "Master" (starring Lee Byung-hun, Gang Dong-won and Kim Woo-bin) – Jo's fourth film after "Cold Eyes", "The World of Silence" and "Make It Big" – remained atop the chart by attracting 1.3 million admissions (44%). Despite a small cut in screens, which dipped from 1,501 to 1,261, and the arrival of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", "Master" managed to carry its success forward into 2017 and move its total tally now to 5.4 million ($36.5 million).

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To retain pole position, "Master" had to contend with the release of the latest "Star Wars" film that arrived in Korea last Wednesday to 858 screens. Gareth Edwards's "Rogue One" was produced for $200 million and has already grossed over $706 million worldwide; in Korea, meanwhile, the film's first weekend out yielded a modest 523,309 admissions ($5.7 million), or 18.1% of the sales: not enough to dislodge Jo's "Master" in pole position.

Last weekend's number two, Garth Jennings's "Sing", a computer-animated musical comedy from the creators of "Despicable Me", moved its bottom line to $7.5 million (1.2 million admissions) after capturing 10.4% of the sales (348,856 admissions). The race for fourth and fifth place was closely contested: Damien Chazelle's "La La Land" (starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone) and Park Jeong-woo's "Pandora" attracted 275,787 and 247,727 admissions respectively, which moves the former's admission count to 2.5 million ($17.1 million) and the latter's to 4.4 million ($28.7 million). "Pandora" is Park's fourth film to date and only needs another hundred thousand admissions to overtake "Deranged" (2012) as his highest-grossing film.

Japanese animations proved popular over the weekend with no less than four films featuring. Kunihiko Yuyama and Motonori Sakakibara's "Rudolf the Black Cat" was the highest Japanese film in the chart having claimed 87,703 admissions (2.6%) from 375 screens; it settled in sixth behind Park's "Pandora". With around 16,000 fewer admissions (71,846) entered "Your Name" by director Makoto Shinkai. "Your Name", based on Shinkai's novel of the same name, continues to receive high praise from critics and filmgoers alike, and the $288.8 million "Your Name" has banked makes it the fourth highest-grossing film released in Japan after "Frozen", "Titanic" and "Spirited Away".

Hong Ji-young's fifth film, "Will You Be There", starring Kim Yun-seok and Byun Yo-han, arrived mid-December and entered the fray in third with 408,352 admissions (19.6%); since then, however, Hong's fantasy melodrama moved to fifth during its second weekend, and then to eighth here with 61,084 admissions. In total, "Will You Be There" has attracted 1.1 million admissions ($7.5 million).

The final two places fell to two more Japanese animations featuring two iconic Japanese characters: "Pokémon the Movie: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel" and "Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016". Both films were released in Korea late December, and over the weekend they added 56,994 (1.7%) and 9,945 admissions (0.3%) respectively.

 

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2016.12.30 - 2017.01.01 (www.kobis.or.kr)

# Films Release date Week-end Total
1 "Master" (마스터) 2016/12/21 1 371 332 5 440 595
2 "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"   523 318 769 786
3 "Sing"   348 859 1 178 350
4 "La La Land"   275 803 2 470 644
5 "Pandora" (판도라) 2016/12/07 247 739 4 401 329
6 "Rudolf the Black Cat" (ルドルフとイッパイアッテナ)   87 703 119 454
7 "Your Name. (君の名は。)"   71 846 74 181
8 "Will You Be There" (당신, 거기 있어줄래요) 2016/12/14 61 086 1 143 434
9 " Pokémon the Movie: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel" (ポケモン・ザ・ムービーXY&Z ボルケニオンと機巧のマギアナ)   56 994 238 454
10 "Doraemon The Movie : Nobita and The Birth of Japan" (映画ドラえもん)   9 948 62 702
Korean movies only  
  "Life Risking Romance" (목숨 건 연애) 2016/12/14 1 183 47 805
  "My Annoying Brother" (형) 2016/11/23 865 2 979 903
  "Because I Love You" (사랑하기 때문에) 2017/01/04 502 16 410
  "Moo-hyun, the Story of Two Cities" (무현, 두 도시 이야기) 2016/10/26 488 192 728
  "Weekends" (위켄즈) 2016/12/22 351 2 351
  "Obedience" (순종) 2016/11/17 208 54 529
  "Our Love Story" (연애담) 2016/11/17 205 22 405
  "GOGURYEO" (나의 살던 고향은) 2016/11/24 152 10 691
  "The Hospice" (목숨) 2014/12/04 131 38 641
  "Vroom! Vroom! : Spider's Adventure Diary" (부릉! 부릉! 브루미즈: 스피더의 모험 일기) 2016/12/15 69 10 229
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