Leading Korean distributor CJ Entertainment has announced that Kim Jee-woon's Oriental Western The Good, The Bad, The Weird has had a smash opening with 2,186,000 admissions on 821 screens as of this morning (July 21).

The film has grossed $14m since it opened Thursday (July 17) on 710 screens with 481,020 admissions according to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC)'s integrated ticketing system.

It tied with Bong Joon-ho's 2006 mutant thriller The Host for the fastest leap past the 2 million admissions mark - within four days.

The local version, which Kim Jee-woon referred to as a 'rock n' roll Western' to the Cannes version which is supposed to be a 'hard rock Western', has additional scenes with actress Uhm Ji-won (Epitaph) as an independence fighter who gives Jung Woo-sung's character (The Good) his mission.

Also, Jung's character is more clearly defined in the beginning and end of the local version, with scenes telling what happens with him and Song Kang-ho (The Weird) after the climactic shoot-out.

With a production budget of $17.1m, the film would break even at about 6 million admissions.

CJ has left the p&a budget open with a cap of up to $2.56m (to bring the total expenditure for the film to KW20bn).

In the most recent of a slew of sales and pre-sales deals for the film, it closed another to IFC for North America.

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