South Korean Box Office Rounds Up An Encouraging July

With several exciting home-grown big-title releases, the South Korean box office is a bright spot amid the grim reality for the hard-hit film industry. Earlier this week, S&P Global Market intelligence and OPUSData numbers showed a 92% shrink in the Asian box office from January to June this year, compared to the first six months of 2019, as reported in Variety.

Invigorating South Korea’s box office at the end of June, zombie thriller #Alive burst onto screens with its timely (and strangely resonant) story of two characters trying to survive a mysterious virus infecting the city’s population. Distributed by Lotte Entertainment, the film starred Yoo Ah-in and Park Shin-hye, and was widely-credited for sparking the domestic box office back to life. It became the first film in South Korea to surpass the one-million admissions mark since February. It has since grossed $13.4 million.

Soon after came another zombie genre film, Peninsula, which is the highly-anticipated sequel to Train to Busan. The film was originally set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, but the Covid-19 pandemic erased any hopes for a physical edition of the festival this year. Starring Gang Dong-won and Lee Jung-hyun, Peninsula opted for a multi-country same-day release on July 15 in its domestic South Korea, along with screens in Singapore and Taiwan. So far, it has topped charts in these countries, along with Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. The film is set to open in Canadian theaters on August 7 and in the U.S. on August 21.

After launching on July 29, Steel Rain 2 displaced Peninsula for top spot on the daily South Korean box office charts. Revolving around Korean geopolitical tensions, the film follows a fictional kidnapping of South Korean, North Korean and American leaders in a North Korean nuclear-powered submarine. In just three days, the film has grossed $3.2 million and received more than 515,000 admissions in South Korea, for a 60% daily revenue share at the box office. (Peninsula is currently holding at 30%.)

Chinese animated film, Happy Little Submarine: Space Pals, also opened on the same Wednesday, ranking fourth on box office charts, with a modest gross of around $70,000. Another Chinese title, Better Days, a coming-of-age drama directed by Derek Tsang, takes fifth spot. Aladdin, the 2019 musical fantasy title from Walt Disney Pictures
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, which was initially released in May last year in South Korea, stands in third place, with a consistent six thousand to eight thousand admissions per day.