Korea Box Office: ‘Exhuma’ on Top for Fifth Weekend, Passes Blockbuster Milestone

Patrick Frater
·2 min read
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Locally-produced horror-drama “Exhuma” held on to top spot at the South Korea cinema box office for a fifth consecutive weekend.

Its complete dominance of the market kept “Exhuma” comfortably ahead of the holdover “Dune 2” and a couple of lower-powered new releases and allowed its running total to surpass 10 million ticket sales. That is the conventional measure of a blockbuster in Korea, a country with a population of roughly 50 million.

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Over the latest weekend “Exhuma” sold 618,000 tickets for a gross revenue of $4.56 million and a market share of 56%, according to data from Kobis, the database operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic).

The latest increment gives the film a total of $73.4 million earned from 10.2 million admissions. While that landmark was achieved by five films in 2019, it has only been passed four times since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. And while “Exhuma” still has a long way to catch “12.12: The Day” from last year and “The Roundup” from 2022, it has a realistic chance of overtaking “The Roundup: No Way Out,” which punched its way to $77.8 million in 2023.

Over the latest weekend “Dune 2” held station in second place with a Friday to Sunday score of $1.1 million, giving it a running total of $15.3 million. That is the third highest total this year.

Japanese animation “Spy x Family Code: White” debuted in third place with a Friday-Sunday score of $794,000 and a five-day opening splash of $1.27 million.

“Wonka” earned $239,000 in fourth place, extending its cumulative to $25.9 million since releasing at the end of January.

The three-day run of “Lee Seung Yoon Concert Docking: Liftoff” was good enough for fifth place (seventh place in Korean charts which show rankings by ticket sales, not revenue). It earned $160,000 from 9,500 admissions.

“Poor Things” warned $106,000 in sixth place over the weekend. After nearly three weeks on release, it has accumulated $1.01 million.

Korean animation “Bread Barbershop: Celeb in Bakery Town” took seventh place in its fourth weekend of release with $92,000, for a cumulative of $1.18 million. (It ranked fifth by ticket sales, with 15,000 admissions.)

In eighth, “Past Lives” earned $70,000 for a total of $738,000 over three weekends. Ninth place belonged to the newly released, Liam Neeson-starring “Marlowe” with $51,000 between Friday and Sunday and $73,100 over its opening five days.

Imported animation title, “Katak the Brave Beluga” earned $48,100 for a two weekend total of $118,000.

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