Korea Box Office: ‘Confidential Assignment 2’ Reaches $47 Million After Winning Fifth Weekend

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Band of Brothers” writer Bruce McKenna is teaming with David Broyles (“Six”) and Nick Jones Jr. (“Yasuke”) to write and produce a limited TV series “Buffalo Rangers” about the 2nd Ranger Company, the only all-Black special operations combat unit in U.S. history. They were notable for their efforts in the Korean War. The series is being produced by South Korea-based Moving Pictures Company, which has a growing English-language slate. No broadcaster or streamer has been announced. Producing alongside Broyles, Jones and McKenna are Thomas Suh (through his production company Système D Entertainment), Paul Merryman (“The Outpost”), Debra Martin Chase (“Harriet,” CBS’s “The Equalizer”) and Jariko Denman (“The Outpost”), a retired master sergeant with 15 combat deployments.

Broadway box office held steady at $28,621,480 last week as a slate of new productions began or continued previews (Almost Famous and Kimberly Akimbo filled more than 90% of their seats), MJ and Leopoldstadt set house records and The Phantom of the Opera was once again standing room only as the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical heads toward its Feb. 18 closing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief BTS, the biggest names in K-Pop, announced Monday that they will sign up for Korea’s mandatory military service, with Jin initiating the process at the end of October. The move means that the septet will become temporarily inactive as a group. But, “both the company and the members of BTS are looking forward to reconvening as a group again around 2025 following their service commitment,” said label Bighit Music. “The members of BTS are currently moving forward with plans to fulfill their military service. Group member Jin will initiate the process as soon as his schedule for his solo release is concluded at the end of October. He will then follow the enlistment procedure of the Korean government. Other members of the group plan to carry out their military service based on their own individual plans,” Bighit said in a statement. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief While the Busan International Film Festival was busily hailing a return to normality the slump at South Korea’s commercial box office deepened dramatically over the most recent weekend. Cinemagoing nationwide was worth only $4.20 million between Friday and Sunday, the lowest weekend total since April and a time before Korean cinemas shed their COVID restrictions. The weekend’s top film “Life Is Beautiful” managed the lowest first place score of any film this year, with a weekend haul of just $777,000, according to data from Kobiz, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

“Till,” directed by “Clemency” filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu, was released in five cities this weekend and grossed $240,940, bringing its per theater average to $15,059 as it will expand to 150-200 theaters in 30 cities next weekend. With critical acclaim on Rotten Tomatoes with a 100% approval rating and a 92% positive rating on Comscore/Screen Engine’s Posttrak, “Till” has built Oscar buzz for lead actress Danielle Deadwyler for her performance as Mamie Till-Mobley, who spent years fighting for justice after the racist lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The free concert by K-pop sensation BTS in Busan, Korea, was viewed by upwards of 49 million people on Saturday. The free-of-charge “BTS ‘Yet to Come’ in Busan” concert was held in support of Busan’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo and represented an attempt to introduce the city and Korean culture to global audience. After a change of venue, the physical component was held at the city’s Asiad Main Stadium and attracted some 50,000 in-person guests. An additional 10,000 people in the city watched a live retransmission at the Busan Port, and a further 2,000 gathered in Haeundae, the tourist area that recently played host to the Busan International Film Festival.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Blackstone Publishing, Aethon Books and Sterling and Stone are among the first publishing partners to join Yonder, a new serialized fiction app combining mobile reading, a serialized experience and thousands of curated stories. Then venture is being launched by South Korea’s Naver, the tech giant that owns Webtoon and Wattpad, the story app that has germinated scores of book-to-film adaptations. The platform offers an ad-free reading experience with several chapters of each story available for free before readers are offered the chance to unlock additional material using virtual coins. At launch, Yonder is the home of exclusive new titles including “Bound to the Shadow Prince,” from Ruby Dixon, the international best-selling fantasy author of the TikTok viral sensation series “Ice Planet Barbarians”; “Bitten by Desire,” the first paranormal romance from best-selling author Ivy Smoak, (“The Hunted” book series”; and “Gravesong,” a spinoff of the popular web serial “The Wandering Inn,” from pirateaba.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief SM Entertainment, one of the leading agency groups in Korean entertainment, said Friday that it will terminate a contract with Lee Soo-man, a year early, at the end of 2022. “SM Entertainment [..] will sever ties with its chief producer Lee Soo-man at the end of this year,” Yonhap news agency reported on Friday. Lee was one of the key figures in the early discovery of Korean pop talent in the mid-1990s, developing the agency system that has hatched numerous idol groups, and has remained one of the biggest executive names in the K-pop business. The four leading agencies are brand names in their own right, organize concerts for their stables of performers, and maintain a far more visible presence than music management firms in most other countries.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean film “A Wild Roomer” and India’s “Shivamma” have been announced as the joint winners of the New Currents competition, the prestige discovery section of the Busan International Film Festival. “We were particularly sensitive to the lightness and subtlety of the director’s view of his characters. Through his innovative cinematography, he creates original circulations between the characters within a house, and builds a very contemporary universe,” the competition jury said of the Lee Jeon-hong-directed “A Wild Roomer.” “We appreciated the originality and intensity with which the director was able to tell this very contemporary story. Here documentary and fiction meet in an organic and spirited way of making cinema. The generosity of the actors and the scenes create a closeness with this universal story that takes place in an Indian village,” the jury said of the Jaishankar Aryar-directed “Shivamma.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Future Laobans,” a project directed by Maung Sun and produced by Maung Sun and Ma Aeint, claimed the Busan Prize, the top award at the Asian Project Market, on Tuesday. The awards were made at an event held at the Paradise Hotel in Busan’s Haeundae district at the end of three days of quick-fire meetings between producers and directors and an array of potential co-producers, financiers and distributors. Organizers said that they put together 705 such one-on-one meetings. The CJ ENM Award went to Indonesia’ “Gaspar,” to be directed by Yosep Anggi Noen and produced by Yulia Evina Bhara and Cristian Imanueli.

Naman Ramachandran An influential panel of buyers from Asia and Europe identified multiple problems in the current, depressed post-pandemic box office landscape for arthouse films and attempted to find solutions at a Platform Busan panel on Monday. The panel included Laure Parleani of Totem Films (France), Kim Heaok of Hark & Company (Japan), Beril Heral of Filmarti (Turkey) and June Lee from Korean streamer Watcha. The panel was moderated by Variety Asia editor Patrick Frater. Parleani mentioned that France has had its worst box office September in 42 years, with only Rebecca Zlotowski’s Venice title “Other People’s Children” and Alice Winocour’s Cannes title “Revoir Paris,” both starring Virginie Efira, bringing some cheer amongst local fare.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean indie production house, IMTV is developing and will produce a drama series based on the New York Times best-selling novel, “The Island of Sea Women” by Lisa See.  The story is set largely on the remote Korean island of Jeju, among the community of ‘haenyo,’ women who earn a living by free diving for mollusks, seaweed and other sea life from the depths of the ocean. Representatives of a rare semi matriarchal society, the women work while the menfolk typically stay at home, though property is passed down along male lines. Celebrated activist and Nobel Prize-winner Malala recently boarded a documentary project about the haenyo of Jeju that is set up at the A24 U.S. indie studio.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japan’s Toei Animation and Korea’s CJ ENM unveiled a volley of new projects on Saturday flowing from their previously-established cooperation pact. The new shows include: a series that will be produced in both live action and animated formats; a live action series; and a third animation series. “The genesis of this co-operation was the notion that we should play to the strengths of Korean content and Japanese animation,” said Yi Jongmin, the CJ executive who heads the joint venture’s shared control unit. “That was before we factor in language barriers and cultural differences and suffered the disruptions of the COVID pandemic.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean sales agent Finecut has added “Secret: Untold Melody” and “The Dinner” to its burgeoning Asian Contents & Film Market slate. Both titles are sourced from a deal with Hive Media Corp. (“Inside Men,” “The Man Standing Next”). An adaptation of 2007 Taiwan hit “Secret,” “Secret: Untold Melody” is a romance film about pianist and a student. While the original film starred Jay Chou and Gwei Lun-mei, the Korean retread stars Doh Kyung-soo (a.k.a D.O. from celebrated K-pop group EXO) who has acting credits including “Swing Kids” and the “Along With The Gods” franchise, and rising star Won Jin-a (“Netflix’s “Hellbound”). Now in post-production, the film is directed by Seo You-min (“Recalled”).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japanese director Miike Takashi, who is known for slasher film “Ichi The Killer” and stomach-churning “Audition,” Friday claimed that he does not like bloody horror scenes. “I’m not a fan of bloody scenes. But that’s what I’m known for. And it is what I get offered. It’s what I was offered by [Korean TV studio] Studio Dragon,” said Miike at a press event in Busan to launch his new genre series “Connect.” The show premieres in the Busan International Film Festival’s series section and will release as a Star Original on the Disney+ streaming service.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Korean sales firm, Finecut is using the Asian Contents & Film Market on the sidelines of the Busan International Film Festival to launch comic action film “Brave Citizen.” The film, now in post-production, is an adaptation of a webtoon which ranked first in popularity when it was serialized on the platform Comico. It was later serialized on another Korean platform Naver Webtoon and recorded 2.27 million views on its Line Webtoon platform in Taiwan. It tells the tale of female former boxing champion who has become a substitute high school teacher. Having witnessed intolerable violence, she dons a mask and throws her first punch for justice.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Manta Comics is to release a webcomic adaptation of “A Hard Day,” a Korean action thriller film from 2014 originally directed by Kim Seong-hun. In Manta’s adaptation, the protagonist Ko Gunsoo has been recreated as a female detective, and the story begins when she accidentally hits a homeless person with her car shortly after her mother’s death. Unwilling to catch a manslaughter charge, Gunsoo hides the body in her mother’s casket. A mysterious stranger soon arrives, claiming knowledge of the hit-and-run, and Gunsoo finds herself embroiled in a shady police corruption scandal.  The 2014 movie was produced by AD406 and distributed internationally by Showbox / Mediaplex.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong multi-hyphenate Peter Chan Ho-sun is far too intellectual to call himself an “arms dealer,” as Sony Pictures has in casting itself as an unattached supplier to streaming platforms. But politeness and Bob Dylan references aside, Chan’s new company, Changin’ Pictures, aims to become a major independent purveyor of premium Asian TV content for the streamers. The company is using this week’s Busan International Film Festival as its launchpad and will unveil the first five series of its 20-title pan-Asian slate.  Chan’s thesis is that global audiences are hungry for Asian content but have not been able to access it easily under legacy film and TV distribution systems. With streaming making everything accessible everywhere, and audiences no longer balking at subtitles, quality Asian drama can and will travel.

Bella Hadid steps out for the Miu Miu dinner and Aftershow Party held at Gigi Paris Tuesday (October 4) in Paris, France.