Last weekend some 2.07 million people across the nation went to the movies. Nearly 1.7 million went to see the top three blockbusters: "Die Hard 4.0", "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", and "Transformers". Together these films accounted for a staggering 85.6 percent of the weekend's box office take, meaning just three Hollywood flicks ate up most of the local audience. Not a single Korean movie released last week made much of an impact, which has been the trend all summer long since "Spider-Man 3" got the ball rolling in May.
A week ago, 83.9 percent of moviegoers went to see either "Harry Potter", which debuted that week, or "Transformers", which opened the last week in June. It's as if Hollywood movies are taking turns being the week's front-runner, handing the baton to the next as it comes along. Many analysts attribute the trend to the relative slump of the Korean film industry and summer audiences' preference for flashy action pictures.
The success of American movies in Korea is a big concern for Chungmuro, Korea's Hollywood, but more distressing is the diminishing number of moviegoers in general. Last week's figure of 2.07 million was down by 603,000 from the previous week, and most people went to just two movies. Bruce Willis' return as an action hero made it to the top, pulling in 859,300 moviegoers nationwide over the weekend, but it was no way near the éclat of the boy-wizard who rounded up 1.4 million fans last week. According to a recent report from CJ CGV, the total number of moviegoers for the first half of this year was 72 million, down by 10.8 percent from the year before.
That's a big drop after a nearly 10-year upward trend that began in 1998. "Movie fans' habits are changing rapidly with many of them watching films on portable devices or on cable TV", said movie critic Lee Sang-yong. "There's a diminishing need to actually go to a theater unless it's to watch a visually stimulating movie".
Last week, another milestone was set at Korean box offices. Michael Bay's transforming robots flick, "Transformers", broke the foreign movie record by attracting over six million people last Wednesday. The previous record was "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" which took in 5.96 million people. Now all eyes are on the movie "May 18", which will be released Thursday, and director Sim Hyung-rae's "D-War", opening next week, to see if the two domestic productions can overturn the Hollywood monopoly and reinvigorate waning audiences.
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