A strong December for regional movies assisted offset an otherwise unpleasant 2023 at the South Korean ticket office — formerly the 5th biggest movie theater area worldwide.
And while theatrical markets in other significant areas have actually recuperated to reach at or near pre-pandemic levels, Korea ended up 44% listed below 2019.
Information from the Korean Film Council’s Kobis tracking service revealed yearly gross incomes of KRW1.261 trillion ($964 million at Jan 2024 rates of exchange) in 2023. That represented a gain of 9% on 2022, however it was far listed below the KRW1.91 trillion ($1.46 billion) taped in 2019, the last pre-COVID year.
The bleak pattern was mirrored in regards to participation or ticket sales, which stays the nation’s favored efficiency procedure. Movie theater participation reached 125 million in 2023, an 11% boost compared to the 113 million tape-recorded in 2022, however 45% listed below 2019’s 227 million.
Kobis’ regular monthly information explain a year of peaks and troughs. Powered by holdover title “Avatar: The Way of Water,” 2023 began brilliantly enough, with a strong January. February, March and April represented a bleak quarter that was especially desperate for Korean movies. Utilized to commanding about half of the yearly overall, these made a weak 25% of the across the country ticket office.
Summer season was brighter, with Korean-produced “The Roundup: No Way Out,” “The Smugglers” and “Concrete Utopia” making respectively $79.9 million, $37.9 million and $28.5 million. “Mission: Impossible– Dead Reckoning Part 1,” with $30.8 million, and “Oppenheimer,” with $26.2 million, were the 2 most significant import successes of the summertime season. (“Barbie,” on the other hand, was a significant flop with simply $4.38 million.)
As summer season turned to fall, both Korean and imported titles had a hard time once again to discover traction, and gross box workplace dropped in between September and November. “The Marvels” made simply $5.22 million in a market that has actually formerly been strong for the MCU.
December was greatly raised by political thriller”12.12: The Day,” which completed as the year’s leading movie, with $88 million, and action thriller “Noryang: The Deadly Sea,” with $26 million taped in the very first 10 days of its December release.
Market share for Korean movies slipped from 56% in 2022 to 48.5% in 2023 (and 51% in 2019), keeping the full-year portion mostly within the bounds of normality. There was plenty of factor for issue.
Just 2 movies– “12.12: The Day” and “The Roundup: No Way Out”– accomplished more than 10 million admissions, the standard denominator of a smash hit in Korea. And the list of frustrations was far longer, consisting of “Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman” ($14.2 million), “Hero” ($13.6 million), “The Point Men” ($13.3 million), “Road to Boston” ($7.22 million) and “The Moon” ($3.97 million) amongst the most noteworthy.
Amongst imported titles, Hollywood too had lots of frustrations. “Elemental,” which had specific Korean connections, was the leading foreign movie of 2023 in Korea, making $54.3 million. 2nd and 3rd locations, nevertheless, came from Japanese animation movies “Suzume” ($43.6 million) and “The First Slam Dunk” ($38.2 million). Hollywood’s underperformers in Korea consisted of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($7.24 million), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” ($6.49 million), “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” ($5.94 million), “The Little Mermaid” ($5.09 million) and “The Flash” ($5.14 million).
Offered the battle to engage audiences withstood by the Korean theatrical market, the variety of movie releases fell both year-on-year and when compared to the completely much healthier 2019. Some 1,539 titles reached Korean screens in 2023, compared to 1,774 in 2022 and 1,943 in 2019, the Kobis information revealed. (Within that overall, both regional and imported numbers dropped.)