[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2015.06.19 ~ 2015.06.21

"Jurassic World" still rules, but under pressure from two new local entries...

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Two films (one foreign, one local) dominated at the top of the pile over the weekend. "Jurassic World" and "The Classified File" were the nation's films of choice, and together constituted over 80% of the sales with just over 2 million admissions between them. Last weekend, "Jurassic World" came and conquered, and week two for this record-breaking thrill ride saw it retain the top stop with over a million in attendance (45%). Colin Trevorrow's "Jurassic World" has already broken the record for the all-time opening weekend in North America, and in South Korea that support has continued as the film, the fourth installment in the "Jurassic Park" series, now moves onto $27M (3.4M admissions).

The special effects and high-profile talent of "Jurassic World" didn't have it all its own way, though. The film gorged itself on over 71% of the box office pie last weekend, but that figure dropped sharply here to just 45%. It was Gwak Kyeong-taek's drama "The Classified File", starring Kim Yun-seok and Yoo Hae-jin, that challenged the rule of Trevorrow's titanic showing, and with 981K admissions (38%) it did just that. Last week the top four places belonged to foreign flicks with local films capturing less than 7%, but with the recent release of Gwak's high-profile piece, there's hope that (more) local features will get Korea's massive summer off to a profitable start.

The other new release was Lee Hae-yeong's mystery flick: "The Silenced", starring Park Bo-young, Uhm Ji-won, Park So-dam and Kong Ye-ji. The film attracted the interest of 201K moviegoers (8%) to comfortably secure a podium place. Its closest challenger, and last weekend's number two, "San Andreas", managed just 95K (4%) which moves its total tally in Korea now to $12.7M (1.6M admissions). The dry and dusty dystopian adventure film "Mad Max: Fury Road" occupied fifth place with 49K going its way (2%), followed by the Japanese film "Midnight Diner" on 33.3K (1.3%) in sixth.

Paul Feig's action comedy Spy hit Korean cinemas at the end of May, and has since been a regular feature in the chart as it continues to absorb admissions and stay popular. Spy fell three places here, though, as it managed to scrape together another 30K admissions to bring its decelerating run now to 2.3M ($16.6M). Worldwide, Spy has more than doubled its production cost of $65M having grossed over $130.9M worldwide. "The Best of Me" followed in eighth with 5.5K, and the list of the weekend's heavy hitters was rounded out by Min Gyoo-dong's "The Treacherous" and Kim Seong-je's "Minority Opinion"; both of which claimed around 4K admissions , with the later only officially being released this coming Thursday.

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2015.06.19 - 2015.06.21 (www.kobis.or.kr)

- C.J. Wheeler (@Woolgatherist; KoreaOnTheCouch)