The South Korea box office reached $937.5m (KRW1.17tn) in 2022, up 98.5% year-on-year, led by local feature The Roundup and Top Gun: Maverick – but is still some way from returning to pre-pandemic levels.
According to a preliminary report from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), cinema attendance rose 86% to 112.8 million compared to 60.53 million in 2021. It marks the first time annual admissions have topped 100 million since the Covid-19 outbreak.
But while clearly showing signs of recovery, total receipts for 2022 are just 60.6% of pre-pandemic 2019 and admissions are at 49.8% of the 227 million tickets sold in 2019, when South Korea was the world’s fourth largest box office market.
Government-funded KOFIC expressed concerns that the national film development fund, which is maintained by a percentage taken from cinema ticket sales, was at $14.4m last year – one-third of 2019’s fund – and is in danger of running out in the second half of 2023.
The top performers were led by local feature The Roundup, the action sequel to The Outlaws starring Don Lee (aka Ma Dong-seok), which was released by ABO Entertainment and Plus M Entertainment on May 18. It took $105.8m (KRW131.3bn) from 12.69 million admissions, making it the only title to surpass $100m and the 10-million ticket mark.
December box office recovered up to 84.5% of the same month in 2019 due in large part to the release of Avatar: The Way Of Water. Disney’s fantasy sequel opened on December 14 and took more than $72.6m (KRW90.3bn) from over 7.3 million admissions to end the year in second place.
It was followed by tentpole releases targeted to summer and Chusok autumn harvest festival cinemagoers: Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick on June 22; local historical naval action film Hansan: Rising Dragon, starring Park Hae-il, on July 27; and Confidential Assignment 2: International on September 7, the North-and-South Korean special agent-and-cop action film starring Hyun Bin, Yoo Hae-jin and Daniel Henney.
Both released by Lotte Cultureworks, Top Gun: Maverick and Hansan: Rising Dragon took $70.8m and $59.3m respectively. CJ ENM’s Confidential Assignment 2: International recorded box office of $57.1m.
KOFIC stated more accurate box office data and further analysis will be published later this year.
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