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[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2016.12.16 ~ 2016.12.18

"Pandora" retains pole position in the aftermath of political unrest...

Park Jeong-woo's thriller "Pandora" retained pole position during its second weekend out by capturing 42.8% of the sales; the film, Park's fourth after "Dance With The Wind", "Big Bang", and "Deranged", added a million admissions to move its total tally now to 3.1 million, or $20.9 million. The film's release is timely given the recent political unrest in the country, which led Maggie Lee, Variety's Chief Asia Film Critic, to write that, "Korean audiences will surely wonder how the lines between parody, fiction, and reality are blurred".

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The American musical "La La Land" by Damien Chazelle was also able to remain unmoved from last week, although not without a serious challenge by Hong Ji-young's "Will You Be There". Chazelle's romantic comedy-drama added 426,838 admissions (20%), which pushed its bottom line to 1.2 million ($9.3 million), followed by Hong's second feature film with 408,355 (17.7%). Hong has directed two segments in two omnibus films before ("Modern Family" and "Horror Stories") and her first feature-length film, "Marriage Blue", attracted 1.2 million admissions back in 2013. "Will You Be There" is a fantasy melodrama starring Kim Yun-seok and Byun Yo-han that's based on Guillaume Musso's novel of the same name.

The family comedy "My Annoying Brother" was next in fourth with 121,705 admissions (5%). Kwon Too-kyeong's third feature entered the fray in first place three weeks ago but has since moved aside as the end-of-year hits make their mark. Kwon's comedy has thus far grossed $19.1 million (2.9 million admissions). Nicholas Stoller's "Storks" slipped just the one place to fifth having banked 3.7% of the box office pie (92,364 admissions), followed by J. K. Rowling's adaptation of her own book: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". This foreign fantasy flick claimed an additional 79,781 stubs (3.4%) over the weekend and has now grossed $32.7 million (4.6 million admissions) in Korea alone; worldwide, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" has made $717.5 million having been produced, by the same company that did "The Lego Movie", for an estimated $180 million.

The 41.6 admissions (1.7%) the Japanese anime "One Piece: Gold" claimed was good enough to see it remain in seventh; since its release on December 8, Hiroaki Miyamoto's "One Piece: Gold" (based on the popular manga of the same name) has made $1.3 million in the Land of the Morning Calm. Lee Eon-hee's mystery film "Missing Woman", starring Uhm Ji-won and Kong Hyo-jin, fell two places to eighth with 30,713 admissions (1.3%). "Missing Woman" is Lee's third film after "...ing" (2003) and "Love Exposure" (2007) and tells the story of a mother frantically searching for her child after she goes missing with her babysitter. Two new entries closed out the weekend's top performers: Song Min-gyoo's debut, "Life Risking Romance" (a Korean-Chinese film starring Ha Ji-won, Chun Jung-myung and Chen Bolin), attracted 19,350 admissions (0.8%) from 382 screens, while the Canadian animation "Snowtime!" (an animated remake of the 1984 film "The Dog Who Stopped the War") by Jean-François Pouliot managed 17,385 (0.7%) admissions from 259 screens.

 

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2016.12.16 - 2016.12.18 (www.kobis.or.kr)

# Films Release date Week-end Total
1 "Pandora" (판도라) 2016/12/07 1 006 645 3 113 998
2 "La La Land"   426 845 1 297 613
3 "Will You Be There" (당신, 거기 있어줄래요) 2016/12/14 408 356 611 962
4 "My Annoying Brother" (형) 2016/11/23 121 708 2 929 573
5 "Storks"   121 708 2 929 573
6 "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"   79 783 4 611 540
7 "One Piece Film: Gold"   41 669 205 900
8 "Missing Woman" (미씽: 사라진 여자) 2016/11/30 30 715 1 139 548
9 "Life Risking Romance" (목숨 건 연애) 2016/12/14 19 350 37 650
10 "Snowtime!"   17 385 21 681
Korean movies only  
  "Master" (마스터) 2016/12/21 8 203 13 881
  "Vroom! Vroom! : Spider's Adventure Diary" (부릉! 부릉! 브루미즈: 스피더의 모험 일기) 2016/12/15 6 928 8 271
  "Obedience" (순종) 2016/11/17 1 964 49 813
  "The Shooting Girls" (슈팅걸스) 2017/__/__ 948 4 094
  "Moo-hyun, the Story of Two Cities" (무현, 두 도시 이야기) 2016/10/26 728 191 174
  "Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned" (가려진 시간) 2016/11/16 450 509 633
  "Le Tour: My Last 49 Days" (뚜르: 내 생애 최고의 49일) 2017/01/__ 387 3 287
  "KUNDO : Age of the Rampant" (군도:민란의 시대) 2014/07/23 370 4 775 811
  "Our Love Story" (연애담) 2016/11/17 304 21 215
  "The Last Princess" (덕혜옹주) 2016/08/03 262 5 599 229
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