[HanCinema's Box Office Review] 2016.10.21 ~ 2016.10.23

"Lucky.Key" retains pole position after screen boost despite "Inferno"...

Lee Gye-byeok's drama "Luck.Key" gained a few more screens during its second week out and retained pole position by adding another 1.4 million admissions (66%) to its total tally. Since its release mid-October, "Luck.Key" has banked $4.3 million (4.3 million admissions) and so moves to number ten in the country's list of highest-grossing films of the year.

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Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's 2013 novel, "Inferno" (the sequel to "The Da Vinci Code"), arrived last Wednesday and settled in second over the weekend with 349,366 admissions (16%) from 753 screens. Last weekend's number two, Tim Burton's dark fantasy "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", found 109,941 admissions during its fourth week out in Korea; worldwide, Burton's latest has grossed just over $200 million (the film was produced for $110 million).

Fede Alvarez's horror "Don't Breathe" has been thrilling critics and filmgoers in America, and with the 45,141 admissions (2%) the film gained over the weekend, the film's total tally in Korea is now just under a million ($7.3 million). Not far behind that American horror entered the local drama "Queen of Walking" starring Shim Eun-kyung, Park Joo-hee, Kim Sae-byuk and Heo Jung-do. The film, director Baek Seung-hwa's third after "Turn It Up to Eleven 2 : Wild Days" (2012) and "Turn It Up to 11" (2009), was given 462 screens from which to pool and scored the attention of 42,163 filmgoers.

New Line Cinema's heartfelt drama "The Notebook" (2004) enjoyed a re-release and managed to grab 1.5% of the box office pie (32,172 admissions), followed by Sharon Maguire's "Bridget Jones's Baby" (Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey). Maguire's latest is the third in the "Bridget Jones" series after " Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" (2004), and since its release late September, the film has sold 803,940 admissions ($5.7 million) in Korea alone; worldwide, "Bridget Jones's Baby" has grossed over $157.9 million.

Choi Seungho's documentary "Spy Nation" fell just the one place to eighth with 15,166 admissions (0.7%), bringing its bottom line now to $631,803 (90,458 admissions), with the Barry Sonnenfeld's "Nine Lives" hot on its heels with 14,309 (0.6%). The second last weekend of October was rounded off with another re-release, this time for the magical world of Hogwarts. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2", the final instalment in the "Harry Potter" series of films, was released back in 2011 but recently made a brief comeback to Korean screens were 12,754 admissions (0.5%) came out to relive the final chapter in Potter's tale.

Korean Box Office - Admissions for the Weekend 2016.10.21 - 2016.10.23 (www.kobis.or.kr)

 - Chris Wheeler