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No Other Choice, the dark comedy thriller by Park Chan-wook, led the South Korea box office on its opening weekend with earnings of $4.6m.
The film, which premiered in Venice competition last month, recorded 609,276 admissions across the three-day weekend (September 26-28). It has a cume of $7.47m and 1.07 million admissions since its release on Wednesday, September 24.
It is selling tickets at a similar pace to My Daughter Is A Zombie, which surpassed a million ticket sales on its fourth day of release in early August and now ranks as the biggest title of the year to date in South Korea with $37.8m from 5.6 million admissions.
The weekend performance also topped the opening for Park’s previous feature, Decision To Leave, which took $2.3m from 320,161 admissions on its first weekend in June 2022. But it could not match the takings for Park’s The Handmaiden, which earned $7.76m from 1.2 million admissions when it bowed in June 2016.
No Other Choice stars Lee Byung-hun (Squid Game) as a family man who is fired from his job and becomes determined to land a new role, brutally dealing with those who stand in his way. The story is based on Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax.
After Venice, the feature won Toronto’s inaugural International People’s Choice Award before playing as the opening film at Busan on September 17. It is South Korea’s submission for the Oscars.
The remainder of the top 10 box office titles were dominated by local and Japanese titles.
In second was Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc, an animated Japanese fantasy feature, which took $2.5m from 311,711 admissions on its opening weekend. It has a cume of $3.58m from 474,478 admissions since releasing on September 24.
On its sixth weekend, animated Japanese blockbuster Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle added $910,000 from 116,878 admissions. It has a cume of $38.7m from nearly 5 million admissions and is close to becoming the second biggest title of the year in South Korea to date.
After leading the chart last weekend, Yeon Sang-ho’s The Ugly dipped to fourth place with $673,500 (90,002 admissions) for a cume of $6.67m (907,389 admissions) since opening on September 11.
South Korean family animation Bread Barbershop: The Bakerytown Baddies opened with $387,000 (58,845 admissions) while a re-release of Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke took $135,000 (17,679 admissions).
Hollywood tentpole F1 strengthened its position as the second highest-grossing film of the year in South Korea to date, adding $74,000 (14,770 admissions) to reach a cume of $38.8m (5.14 million admissions).
The chart was rounded out by UK animation Octonauts: Above And Beyond – Season 2, which opened with $87,000 (12,177 admissions); Japanese animation Detective Conan, which added $86,479 (11,369 admissions) for a cume of $542,000 (71,601 admissions); and Frankenstein: The Musical Live, which earned $165,000 (9,596 admissions) on its second weekend for a cume of $863,500 (49,303 admissions).
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