[HanCinema's Box Office Review]

Marvel's "Doctor Strange" arrives and thrives

Marvel's fourteenth film, "Doctor Strange", arrived last Wednesday and shot straight to the top of the chart by capturing 63.4% of the box office pie. The film, directed by Scott Derrickson, had a massive 1,500 screens from which to pool and attracted 1.6 million admissions ($12.9 million) to dislodged Lee Gye-byeok's comedy drama "Luck.Key" as the country's film of choice.

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Lee's sophomore film, after "The Beast and the Beauty" (2005), has been riding high since its release three weeks ago; it's first official weekend out yield 1.6 million (68%), followed by another 1.4 million (66%) in week two, and with this weekend's tally considered, "Luck.Key" is now the eighth highest-grossing film of the year with 5.6 million admissions ($40 million).

Lee Doo-hwan's debut fear film "Hide-and-Never Seek" (starring Ryu Deok-hwan, Jo Bok-rae and Lee Soo-bin) was up next after bringing in 125,225 admissions (4.4%) from 498 screens, followed by Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's 2013 novel, "Inferno". Howard's film is the third in the series after "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons", and once again stars Tom Hanks as the Harvard University professor Robert Langdon. "Inferno" added another 56,339 admissions (2%) to move its total tally in Korea now to 624,890 ($4.5 million); worldwide, "Inferno" has already grossed $247.7 million having been produced for $75 million.

The re-release of the 2004 American romance flick "The Notebook" featured in fifth place with 24,511 admissions (1%), followed by Tim Burton's latest, "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", on 16,523 (0.6%). Burton's dark fantasy arrived in Korea late September and has since accumulated just under $20 million (2.7 million admissions).

"Kubo and the Two Strings", a stop-motion animation from America by Travis Knight (his debut), enter the fray in seventh place with 13,632 admissions (0.4%) and was tailed by another new local release in the form of Jeon In-hwan's "Moo-hyun, the Story of Two Cities": a documentary about Korea's ninth president, Roh Moo-hyun (1946~2009). Jeon's debut found 10,741 admissions (0.4%) from just 57 screens which was good enough for eighth place during this top-heavy weekend.

Choi Seungho's documentary about a government conspiracy, "Spy Nation", fell just the one place after adding 8,000 stubs to its cause (0.3%), bringing its total admissions count now to 108,802 ($748,057). The last weekend of October was rounded off by Baek Seung-hwa's "Queen of Walking" starring Shim Eun-kyung, Park Joo-hee and Kim Sae-byuk. Last weekend, the film, Baek's third after "Turn It Up to Eleven 2 : Wild Days" (2012) and "Turn It Up to 11" (2009), entered in fifth place having captured 1.8% (42,163 admissions), but its second week out saw it slip to tenth with just 6,661 admissions (0.2%).  

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2016.10.28 - 2016.10.30 (www.kobis.or.kr)

 - Chris Wheeler