Is It Good News for Korean Films?
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By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter
The entire nation seems to be celebrating "The King and the Clown" becoming the No. 1 hit in the domestic film history, selling almost 12 million tickets. Many people believe that it has opened a new era for the local film industry.
Remarkable achievements aside, experts point out that just focusing on numbers can be meaningless.
"The success of `The King and the Clown' could have resulted from the sacrifices of small films, which couldn't find theaters to show, while the film occupied hundreds of screens nationwide", said Kim Heoun-sic, a pop culture critic.
Even if not an intentional result, such small yet good films as "The Station Agent" and "Osama" had limited chances to meet local audiences as they were only screened at one venue for a very short period of time, Kim added.
"The King and the Clown" started screening at some 250 screens nationwide on its first week, but gradually increased to 400 at its peak. The nation has a total of about 1500 screens.
While it has been an issue how many audiences the film would attract or whether it could be the most commercially successful film, Kim thinks that there has been hardly any constructive criticism on the film nor efforts to find the real meaning of its success and huge impact on society.
"For example, though the film has a gay theme, I don't think it is a gay movie, and it may involve prejudice against sexual minorities as it avoids dealing with controversial issues directly, only showing distorted and beautified images of homosexuality", Kim said.
Different from other conventional gay-themed movies, the film portrays a seeming apparent love triangle between the three men _ king and two clowns _ in an indirect and ambiguous way without any explicit love scenes.
From the angle of the film industry, some critics argue that films attracting more than 10 million moviegoers can have a negative impact on the industry as a whole.
"When you talk about the health of the industry, ideally it's better to have 12 movies, each attracting one million moviegoers, than one with 12 million audiences", says Oh Jeung-il, assistant research fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade.
The size of the local film market is almost fixed with a total of some 120 million tickets sold annually, meaning that if only a few movies take most of them, the others cannot even think of surviving in the market, Oh said.
Its massive success may motivate local film production companies to produce another "The King and the Clown" for commercial success which will be damaging to local movies in the long term, Oh added.
"And it could be merely a record-breaking obsession if the film is now being shown on so many screens despite low seat occupation rates", Oh said.
Staff Reporter
The entire nation seems to be celebrating "The King and the Clown" becoming the No. 1 hit in the domestic film history, selling almost 12 million tickets. Many people believe that it has opened a new era for the local film industry.
Remarkable achievements aside, experts point out that just focusing on numbers can be meaningless.
"The success of `The King and the Clown' could have resulted from the sacrifices of small films, which couldn't find theaters to show, while the film occupied hundreds of screens nationwide", said Kim Heoun-sic, a pop culture critic.
Even if not an intentional result, such small yet good films as "The Station Agent" and "Osama" had limited chances to meet local audiences as they were only screened at one venue for a very short period of time, Kim added.
"The King and the Clown" started screening at some 250 screens nationwide on its first week, but gradually increased to 400 at its peak. The nation has a total of about 1500 screens.
While it has been an issue how many audiences the film would attract or whether it could be the most commercially successful film, Kim thinks that there has been hardly any constructive criticism on the film nor efforts to find the real meaning of its success and huge impact on society.
"For example, though the film has a gay theme, I don't think it is a gay movie, and it may involve prejudice against sexual minorities as it avoids dealing with controversial issues directly, only showing distorted and beautified images of homosexuality", Kim said.
Different from other conventional gay-themed movies, the film portrays a seeming apparent love triangle between the three men _ king and two clowns _ in an indirect and ambiguous way without any explicit love scenes.
From the angle of the film industry, some critics argue that films attracting more than 10 million moviegoers can have a negative impact on the industry as a whole.
"When you talk about the health of the industry, ideally it's better to have 12 movies, each attracting one million moviegoers, than one with 12 million audiences", says Oh Jeung-il, assistant research fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade.
The size of the local film market is almost fixed with a total of some 120 million tickets sold annually, meaning that if only a few movies take most of them, the others cannot even think of surviving in the market, Oh said.
Its massive success may motivate local film production companies to produce another "The King and the Clown" for commercial success which will be damaging to local movies in the long term, Oh added.
"And it could be merely a record-breaking obsession if the film is now being shown on so many screens despite low seat occupation rates", Oh said.
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