7.65 Million Viewers Watched 'Inside Out 2'... Korean New Films Pushed Aside

Weekend Theater Attendance Reaches 1,672,107 Visitors

Exterior view of a theater in Seoul
[Photo by Yonhap News]

The American Disney·Pixar animated film 'Inside Out 2' has held the top spot at the weekend box office for over a month. New Korean film releases are struggling to gain traction.

According to the Korea Film Council's integrated ticket sales network on the 15th, 'Inside Out 2' attracted 502,787 viewers over the weekend (12th?14th), securing first place at the box office. Since its release on the 12th of last month, it has accumulated a total audience of 7,655,480. It ranks third in all-time box office among domestically released animations, following 'Frozen 2' (13.76 million viewers, 2019) and 'Frozen' (13.76 million viewers, 2014). It also comfortably surpassed the record of Pixar's highest-grossing film released last year, 'Elemental' (7.24 million viewers). The story of characters depicting emotions such as ‘Anxiety’ and ‘Shyness’ has been praised for eliciting universal empathy. This word-of-mouth has steadily attracted new audiences.

New Korean films released in June and July have not received significant responses. Despite lead actors conducting extensive promotional activities early on to generate interest, their box office performance after release has been poor. 'Escape: Project Silence' (directed by Kim Tae-gon), the late Lee Sun-kyun’s final work who passed away in December last year, opened in second place with 349,723 viewers over the weekend. It was released on Friday (the 12th), not the usual Wednesday or Thursday, and totaled 355,586 viewers.

The North Korean defection thriller 'Escape' (directed by Lee Jong-pil), starring Lee Je-hoon and Koo Kyo-hwan, attracted 349,335 viewers, placing third. Its cumulative audience is 1,345,308. The film appears to have lost momentum by the second weekend, making it unlikely to surpass the break-even point (approximately 2 million viewers) if this trend continues.

The comedy 'Handsome Guys' starring Lee Sung-min and Lee Hee-joon (214,373 viewers), the aviation disaster film 'Hijacking' starring Ha Jung-woo (101,716 viewers), and the animation 'Doraemon the Movie: Nobita’s Symphony' (34,392 viewers) ranked fourth to sixth respectively. The total number of viewers who visited theaters over the weekend was 1,672,107.