Haeundae's Tidal Success Tempered by Pirated Downloads
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Disaster film "Haeundae"'s wave of success has just been tempered by electronic pirates. The film was briefly leaked across peer to peer sites with 100,000 copies downloaded over the weekend. Significantly the film that sold over 10,000,000 tickets and was seen by some as the mark of the reversal of the Korean film slump is still playing in theatres.
This comes at a time when new laws put in place by the government last year to stop such illegal downloading have had success. "Haeundae" is the first major film to be illegally downloaded, while it is still in its theatrical run, since the new laws were put in place. Although Korea is infamous for film downloading, most blockbusters these days are obtained legally through major internet portals such as Naver.
The film's distributor CJ Entertainment has reacted with surprising voracity publicly denouncing the actions, requesting a police investigation and even launching a probe into the actions of its own employees. Despite the film's titanic success somewhat subsiding it is still at number two at the box office, has just been released in China and is to be released in a number of other territories.
David Oxenbridge (KOFIC)
This comes at a time when new laws put in place by the government last year to stop such illegal downloading have had success. "Haeundae" is the first major film to be illegally downloaded, while it is still in its theatrical run, since the new laws were put in place. Although Korea is infamous for film downloading, most blockbusters these days are obtained legally through major internet portals such as Naver.
The film's distributor CJ Entertainment has reacted with surprising voracity publicly denouncing the actions, requesting a police investigation and even launching a probe into the actions of its own employees. Despite the film's titanic success somewhat subsiding it is still at number two at the box office, has just been released in China and is to be released in a number of other territories.
David Oxenbridge (KOFIC)
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