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[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2015.10.02 ~ 2015.10.04

"The Intern" rises to the top while Ryoo Seung-wan's "Veteran" breaks another record...

Nancy Meyers' "The Intern" has dislodged Lee Joon-ik's popular period piece "The Throne" to become the country's new number one. Lee's latest has been sitting pretty at the top for three weeks now, and since its release mid-August it's managed to amass a total tally of 5.5 million admissions, 492 thousand of which came from this past weekend. But a second week in the charts has helped raised Meyer's film to the top in a tightly contested weekend where the podium placements could have gone either way.

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Starring Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, "The Intern" tells the tale of successful e-commerce CEO who agrees to accept seniors as part of a social outreach program. The film has already made $72.1 million worldwide and featured in fourth place last weekend with 337 thousand admissions when it was released in Korea. Week two saw the film rise to the top of the pile with 532 thousand admissions going its way (26.6%) across 659 screens. So far, the American comedy has sold 1.4 million tickets ($10 million) in Korea and has managed to jump three places to settle in first place.

In third place fell Kim Jeong-hoon-II's comedy "Accidental Detective" starring Kwon Sang-woo and Sung Dong-il. Last weekend Kim's effort occupied second place by capturing 16.6% of the box office pie but slipped a place here as filmgoers narrowly favoured "The Intern". "Accidental Detective" added another 472 thousand stubs over the weekend to advance its total tally now to 2 million ($17.5 million), just 20 thousand less than "The Throne" and 60 thousand behind "The Intern".

Dystopian sci-fi has proved to be a popular genre for young adults in recent years and the second feature in the "Maze Runner" series of films is keeping that trend alive and well and in the black. Wes Ball's adaptation of James Dashner's second book in his popular series of books has already grossed $211 million worldwide, and since its release in Korea on the 16th of last month, the film has made $17.5 million (2.6 million admissions) on Korea soil alone. Like "The Accidental Detective", "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" slipped a place in the charts in light of the rise of "The Intern" and ultimately was only able to secure another 191 thousand across 414 screens.

Ryoo Seung-wan's "Veteran" is now the third highest-grossing Korean film of all time having moved its total tally to 13.3 million ($89 million). Over the weekend the film added 82 thousand to its cause (4%), but, to be fair, it has been in the charts since early August. Incredibly, "Veteran" has now surpassed "The Thieves" and "The Host" as Korea's third most successful feature, just behind "Ode to My Father" (14.2 million) and "The Admiral: Roaring Currents" (17.6 million). In recent years there has been a significant rise of local productions that are reaching, and pushing past, the 10 million admissions mark, and "Veteran" is the second movie to achieve this this year (the other being Choi Dong-ho's "The Assassination" with 12.6 million admissions sold).

The French animation "Mune" was next in sixth place with 191 thousand tickets sold (2.5%), followed by Cheon Seong-il's war drama "The Long Way Home" with 43 thousand (2%). Masayuki Ochiai's supernatural horror film "Ju-on: The Final Curse" was released in its home country of Japan back in June and arrived in Korea on the first to claim 35 thousand during its first weekend out. Close behind Ochiai's efforts came the British-American production "Everest" on 31 thousand (1.8%), and the first weekend of October was rounded out by Dan Fogelman's comedy drama "Danny Collins" with 22.7 thousand (1%).

 

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2015.10.02 - 2015.10.04 (www.kobis.or.kr)

# Films Release date Week-end Total
1 "The Intern"   532 790 1 463 611
2 "The Throne" (사도) 2015/09/16 492 528 5 571 401
3 "Accidental Detective" (탐정 : 더 비기닝) 2015/09/24 472 538 2 004 937
4 "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials"   191 527 2 608 202
5 "Veteran" (베테랑) 2015/08/05 82 578 13 341 114
6 "Mune" (Mune, le gardien de la lune)   57 879 241 831
7 "The Long Way Home" (서부전선) 2015/09/24 43 084 578 922
8 "Juon The Final"   35 915 46 537
9 "Everest"   31 389 315 862
10 "Danny Collins"   22 715 40 291
Korean movies only  
  "Right Now, Wrong Then" (지금은맞고그때는틀리다) 2015/09/24 10 137 47 456
  "With or Without You" (춘희막이) 2015/09/30 8 182 21 068
  "The Advocate : A missing body" (성난 변호사) 2015/10/08 1 794 8 322
  "Hello Jeon Woo-chi! The Battle of the Magic Robots" (안녕, 전우치! 도술로봇대결전) 2015/10/08 587 850
  "The Assassination" (암살) 2015/07/22 452 12 698 787
  "Street Stall" (포장마차) 2015/10/01 274 306
  "Beauty Inside" (뷰티 인사이드) 2015/08/20 272 2 051 525
  "Life of Woman" (여자의 일생, 1968) - Re-release   259 7 823
  "The Summer in Ibaraki" (이바라키의 여름) 2015/08/06 231 568
  "Forever With You" (그대와 영원히, 1958) - Re-release   165 617

- C.J. Wheeler (@WoolgatheristKoreaOnTheCouch)

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