January 23, 2006

왕의 남자 (The King and The Clown) Says Bye-Bye to 쉬리 (Shiri)

(Posted In Action Asia Box Office Comedy Drama )

Lee Joon-Ik's 왕의 남자 (The King and The Clown) is on fire. We've covered its box office run in depth, if anything because it's such an inspirational success story, and the kind of film Chungmuro needs to focus on more often. Lee Joon-Ik and his company were several Billion Won in the red, and they desperately needed a big hit to stay afloat, or at least keep doing business without worrying about going belly up after every film. What did he do to solve the problem, go out and spend 20 Billion on a big blockbuster with huge stars? No, spend as little as the situation allowed, use talented actors who didn't have any major success on their shoulders in the past, and focus on storytelling.

The results? Well, you've read about the great opening, and the other great three weeks of release. But now 'The King and The Clown' is part of history. It went past Kang Je-Gyu's 쉬리 (Shiri) to become the 5th most successful Korean film of all time. It has now sold 6,380,000 tickets nationwide, the second highest grossing film of 2005 behind 웰컴 투 동막골 (Welcome To Dongmakgol). Although 투사부일체 (My Boss, My Student) had a tremendous first weekend, it's very likely this run will continue. Full box office report tomorrow.

[Source: Maxmovie]

» Posted by X at January 23, 2006 03:00 AM
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Reader Comments

Awesome amazing site. Caught KING'S MAN in Korea on opening day 8AM screening and I'm so glad I did. CAn you list attendance numbers for US films that open in korea as well to compare? I know King Kong just passed the 4 million mark.

Keep up the great work.

» Posted by T at January 23, 2006 04:00 AM

thx to twitchfilm (& X) for me this movie became the most anticipated movie for 2006. I can't wait for the DVD release (and many reviews :)

» Posted by Freewell at January 23, 2006 07:42 AM

Tat-- KOFIC website publishes box-office totals or you can go to Han Cinema, where, in addition to listing weekly ticket sales, they also post Korean film news and screen shots.

Following are totals for last week-end:


Box Office
# Films Week-end
2006.01.13 ~ 2006.01.15 Total
1 The King and the Clown 880,685 4,036,038
2 Running Wild 389,370 486,384
3 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe 232,640 1,890,146
4 Art of Fighting 231,799 923,652
5 King Kong 197,802 3,196,281
6 The Art of Seduction 52,879 1,803,931
7 Typhoon 27,342 3,460,251
8 In Her Shoes 23,944 28,930
9 Blue Swallow 11,016 482,962
10 The Alibi 8,176

» Posted by jon pais at January 23, 2006 11:33 AM

KOFIC uses KOBIS for weekly data, which only accounts for 78% of the country's theaters, so not very accurate. Of course distributors can inflate numbers, but they're usually pretty reliable.

But the quarterly numbers are taken from distributors, so they're more accurate.

» Posted by x at January 23, 2006 12:08 PM

to whom may it concern,
hope you could send me the jan. 20-22 korean weekend box office top 10. more power to twitchfilm! hope you could send me the top 30 box office gross of korean films of all time.

» Posted by alan gaw at January 24, 2006 05:36 AM

Box Office Report will be up later, you can check the main page in about an hour, 90 Minutes.

As for the Top 30 of all time, I might start enlarging the All Time Top from next week, if there's interest.

» Posted by x at January 24, 2006 06:36 AM

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