[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2014.06.27 ~ 2014.06.29

Published on 2014/06/30

Bay's Blockbuster Dominates…

Michael Bay's bombastic "Transformers: Age of Extinction" landed in Korea on Wednesday and, quite simply, dominated. The lastest in the "Transformer" series enslaved some 1.8M filmgoers over a whopping 1,597 screens to dislodge "Edge of Tomorrow" as Korea's film of choice. It did so by greedily gobbling 78% of the box office pie, leaving little more than crumbs for the rest of the pack as Bay's brutes raced to 2.6M admissions ($21.6M).

Last week Doug Liman's sci-fi adaptation "Edge of Tomorrow" enjoyed its third straight week at the top, but its reign was abruptly brought to an end here as it slumped to mere 206K (8%). That sum was, amazingly, still good enough for silver this weekend, a haul that would have place fifth last week and eight the week before that. But Bay's blockbusters are cruel and stingy, and the lure of giant anthropomorphic robots was just too tempting for Korean audiences not to throw their hard-earned won at it.

The only local flicks to crack a top ten finish were, once again, Kim Seong-hun's "A Hard Day" and Park Sang-joon's "For The Emperor". The former claimed third with 198K (7.7%) while Park's action noir only managed seventh with 14K (0.5%). "A Hard Day" has performed well considering the stiff foreign competition it's had to contend with, and over its five weeks has toiled to advanced it total tally now to over 3M ($23.8). The film now becomes the fourth highest grossing film of the year.

In fourth place came "Beauty and the Beast" with 32K (1%), followed by the Swedish adaptation "The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared" which managed retain fifth position with 26K. Last week the biopic "Grace of Monaco" claimed sixth with almost 75K, but fell one place here with its diminished take of 14K. The film, which stars Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly, was heavily slammed by critics and has been soaked in scandal as director Oliver Dahan and distributor Harvey Weinstein quarrel over the various versions of the film.

Meanwhile, Spike Jonza's celebrated comedy-drama "Her" enjoyed its sixth week in the top ten, and over the weekend it added another 9.2K to its cause. The acclaimed film now moves its total tally in Korea to 293K ($2.3M), but only narrowly outplayed the Chinese animation "Roco Kingdom: The Desire of Dragon" for eighth place. Lastly, this past weekend's top ten was rounded out by Lars Von Trier's first instalment of his explicit masterpiece "Nymphomaniac" (6K).

What's coming out next week in Korea? [HanCinema's Film News] New Korean Films Inbound...

Last weekend's report: [HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2014.06.20 ~ 2014.06.22

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2014.06.27 - 2014.06.29 (www.kobis.or.kr)

#	Films	Release date	Week-end	Total
1	"Transformers: Age of Extinction"		1 851 260	2 638 073
2	"Edge of Tomorrow"		206 772	4 346 622
3	"A Hard Day" (무덤까지 간다)	2014/05/29	198 598	3 082 991
4	"Beauty and the Beast" (La Belle et La Bête)		32 429	285 587
5	"The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" (Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann)		26 208	182 015
6	"Grace of Monaco"		20 890	178 475
7	"For The Emperor" (황제를 위하여)	2014/06/12	14 796	580 536
8	"Her"		9 229	293 852
9	"Roco Kingdom : The Desire of Dragon" (洛克王國2聖龍的心愿)		9 220	10 590
10	"Nymphomaniac: Vol. I"		6 290	43 332
Korean movies only
	"The Divine Move" (신의 한수)	2014/07/03	2 191	4 213
	"The Stone" (스톤)	2014/06/12	1 439	14 201
	"Man on High Heels" (하이힐)	2014/06/04	1 384	340 392
	"Confession" (좋은 친구들)	2014/07/10	938	2 110
	"Gyeongju" (경주)	2014/06/12	729	58 176
	"Futureless Things" (이것이 우리의 끝이다)	2014/06/26	717	1 554
	"You Are My Vampire" (그댄 나의 뱀파이어)	2014/06/12	471	2 870
	"BLACKDEAL" (블랙딜)	2014/07/03	425	2 779
	"No Tears for the Dead" (우는 남자)	2014/06/04	369	601 918
	"Obsessed" (인간중독)	2014/05/14	225	1 441 015

- C.J. Wheeler (chriscjw@gmail.com; @KoreaOnTheCouch)