Political drama thriller “12.12: The Day” dominated the South Korean box office for a second weekend with a $13 million haul.
Its second weekend outing topped its first session, when it earned $11.2 million, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). And the film (aka “Seoul Spring”) increased its share of the weekend’s total cinema market to a crushing 81%.
Separately, ComScore calculated that the film’s single country receipts made it the seventh highest grossing film in the world over the weekend.
After two weekends on release, “12.12: The Day” has garnered $34.2 million, making it already the sixth ranking film in Korea this year and the third biggest Korean-produced picture. On this track, it will overtake “Smugglers” before the next weekend.
In terms of admissions, “12.12: The Day” enjoyed 1.7 million ticket sales over the weekend, for a running total of 4.66 million. The traditional mark of a blockbuster hit in Korea is 10 million ticket sales, which this year has only been achieved by one movie, “The Roundup: No Way Out.”
The relative success of “12.12: The Day” lifted the overall Korean box office above $10 million for a weekend for only the third time since the summer. The latest weekend was worth $15.9 million.
The week’s highest placed new release was “Single in Seoul,” which opened in second place with $943,000 over weekend and $1.61 million over its opening five days.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” grabbed $500,000 and third place in its third week of release in Korea. Since releasing on Nov. 15, it has amassed $4.88 million.
Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Japanese drama “Monster” opened in fourth place. It earned $426,000 over the weekend and $847,000 over its first five days. His previous film, the Korean-language “Broker” earned $9.67 million from 1.27 million admissions.
The following six places belonged to animated films. These included a new Korean title, “Arctic Justice,” newly-released “Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning,” re-released “Frozen 2,” “Detective Conan The Movie: Black Iron Submarine” and Miyazaki Hayao’s “The Boy and the Heron.”
