While grabbing popular attention overseas at the Toronto International Film Festival and the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the movie, 'April Snow' is setting good records with its release in Hong Kong and Japan.
Drawing 24,000 viewers for the first 5 days in 24 theaters, the movie took in HK$ 1,198,000 in ticket sales. 'April Snow' also finds second place at box-office on its opening day.
Director Heo Jin-ho has visited Hong Kong early September as a co-producer of 'One Fine Spring Day (2001)' to promote the film. The large number of inquiries from local media to interview director Heo at that time showed how much they are interested in him and his movie 'April Snow.' Such expectations even before the film released may have been connected with the success of 'April Snow' in Hong Kong.
In the meantime, with its concurrent release in 434 screens of 321 theaters in Japan, the movie took in JPY 0.54 billion in ticket sales by September 20, ranked second at the box-office.
As a result, that is 420 thousand of Japanese audiences have seen 'April Snow.' Also, it scared up JPY 315 million in ticket sales during the first weekend, which is 1.4 times more than what was marked during the first week by 'Windstruck' the highest grossing Korean film in Japan. It is the Korea's biggest blockbuster ever in Japan.
Total box-office receipts of 'April Snow' is by far more than that of the other films released concurrently, that includes Shinobi, Fantastic Four, Cinderella Man and Initial D. It is also promising in that the movie does not see much box-office drop in weekdays after its opening weekend.
While weekday ticket sales of 'Windstruck' and 'Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War' is about 40% of weekend ticket sales, it is 60% in case of 'April Snow.' It is expected that 'April Snow' stands a good chance of breaking the JPY 2 billion total box-office sales of the hit Korean movie "Windstruck" which took over JPY 3 billion in box-office gross.
To find that 'April Snow' received 200,000 advance ticket orders, it was an anticipated success, and it is hoped to make another hit in Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hawaii and China where the movie will open soon.
Meanwhile, renowned film critic, James Bererdinelli, who was attending at the Toronto International Film Festival, complimented 'April Snow,' saying "It is my favorite Asian film screened at the festival, and I do hope for its distribution in the US. The love story is quite touching in that it shows how people find a way to console themselves even when it seems impossible, with great acting by all the actors. If anyone asks which film is most impressive, I would mention 'April Snow' as one of my answer".
Greatly appealed in Toronto, director Heo is visiting Spain as the film competes on the official section of the 53rd edition of San Sebastian International Film Festival in San Sebastian, northern Spain. On September 19, 'April Snow' was screened at 4 in the afternoon when, in fact, the public are not likely to make it, yet 2,000 seats in the theater were fully occupied, and the audience gave a standing ovation to the movie at the end, Show East reports.
'April Snow' is being invited for competition to the Vancouver International Film Festival as well as the Chicago International Film Festival. Especially, in case of the Vancouver International Film Festival, the programmer had known of 'April Snow' later, and made a belated invitation at the time the film lineup was almost completed, which is a special case.
The Source : Koreacontent News Team
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