Korea Box Office: ‘I, The Executioner’ Reaches $40 Million After Second Weekend, as ‘Begin Again’ Enjoys Return

Local blockbuster “I The Executioner” dominated the South Korea box office for a second weekend. Its cumulative total reached $40 million after ten days on release.

The film, a sequel to 2015 crime comedy drama “The Veteran,” “I, The Executioner” released a week earlier with little serious opposition from new release titles. Those conditions held true in the film’s second weekend, and the film’s first non-holiday frame.

Between the latest Friday and Sunday, the film earned $6.63 million, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). Its 10-day cumulative is $40.7 million, earned from 5.61 million spectators.

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The weekend figures represent a steep 56% week-on-week decline. But the comparison is atypical as the previous weekend represented the first few days of a five-day holiday. The film’s market share remained dominant, at over 71%.

Chuseok was a mixed bag for the cinema industry. Kofic reports that spectator numbers for the five-day period, at 4.66 million, were up by 50% year-on-year. But they still fell short of the 5.13 million who passed through cinema turnstiles on the same weekend in 2019.

On the other hand, success was driven by one film alone. Last year’s Chuseok saw three ambitious films released – “Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman: Secret of Snowy Field,” “Boston 1947” and “Cobweb” – but they largely flopped.

The post-holiday weekend blues and the ongoing lack of new release titles returned cinemagoing back to more normal levels. Nationwide theatrical takings over the weekend were $9.23 million.

The highest scoring new release, was in fact, a re-issue of a Hollywood romance “Begin Again.” The 2014 John Carney-directed film earned $331,000 and took second place.

Third place was occupied by “Heartsping: Teeniping of Love,” which took $307,000 for a cumulative of $7.36 million. Extrapolated from a kids’ TV franchise, it is now one of the highest-grossing Korean-made animation films of all time.

Another Korean animation, “Bread Barbershop: The Birth of the Bread Star” dipped to fourth place. It earned $269,000 for a cumulative of $1.22 million since releasing on Sept. 14.

Concert film, “Lim Young Woong IM HERO The Stadium” was ranked fifth with weekend revenues of $262,000. (Local cinema charts show it in seventh, measured by ticket numbers.) That gives it a cumulative of $6.35 million since releasing on Aug. 28.

Japanese animation film, “Look Back” took sixth place with $194,000 for a cumulative of $1.45 million after 19 days on release.

“Alien: Romulus” followed with $159,000 for a cumulative of $15.1 million. It remains propped up by its continued appearance in premium-priced venues.

“Transformers One,” which releases on Wednesday, made a chart appearance in eighth place due to preview screenings. These gave the “Transformers” franchise animated spinoff an $89,000 weekend and means that the film has already banked $270,000 in Korea ahead of its release.

Chinese youth film re-release “Better Days” earned $88,000 for a running total of $1.88 million. Tenth placed, Korean panda documentary “My Dearest Fu Bao” earned $76,900 to bring up its cumulative to $1.66 million since releasing on Sept. 4.