Korea Box Office: ‘Exhuma’ Reaches $58 Million, Easily Holds Off ‘Dune 2’

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran Chinese director Zhang Yimou will be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the upcoming edition of the Festival of Far East Film in Italy’s Udine (April 24 – May 2). The lineup will include three films by Zhang: his 2023 political thriller “Under the Light” in its competition section; as well as “To Live” and “Raise the Red Lantern” in its restored classics section. The festival’s total lineup includes 74 films in total – 47 in competition and 28 out of competition) from 11 countries.

Naman Ramachandran Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £4 million ($5.1 million), according to numbers from Comscore. In the process, the band of ectoplasm hunters ended the three-week reign of Warner Bros.’ “Dune: Part II” in pole position.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hybe, the Korean firm behind K-pop’s BTS, has struck an expanded 10-year deal with Universal Music Group (UMG), providing Hybe’s roster of artists and labels access to UMG’s leading global network. UMG will further collaborate with Hybe’s global superfan platform Weverse, bringing more of a direct connection between UMG artists and their fandom. Hybe and UMG will additionally collaborate on artist promotions and marketing activities in North America under the oversight of Scooter Braun – who, in his time as CEO of Hybe America, acquired QC Media Holdings and incorporated SB Projects as well as Big Machine Label Group into the existing roster. Hybe and UMG first teamed up in 2017 on BTS, through a distribution agreement in Japan. In 2021, the companies expanded their relationship with a global strategic agreement which saw collaborations across multiple projects and use of Weverse for fan communication.

EXCLUSIVE: After smashing records in Vietnam, Tran Thanh’s hit romance drama Mai has now set a new milestone for an opening weekend at the international box office, becoming the first Vietnamese title to score a $1M debut outside the home market.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief 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. 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.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief V from Korean pop icons BTS will Tuesday unveil a live performance video in collaboration with French luxury brand Cartier in support of his – already hit – new digital single “FRI(END)S.” Released at 1 p.m. Korean time on Friday, “FRI(END)S” is a pop soul song that is the artist’s first solo project since “Layover,” his debut solo album released in September. The English-language song is a love song depicting one person’s confession of love to a friend.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The South Korean box office had a familiar look. Dark drama, “Exhuma” dominated the chart with a more than 50% market share for the fourth weekend in a row. And, for the third successive weekend, “Dune 2” placed second. “Exhuma,” about two shaman, a feng shui master and a mortician who attempt to reverse the mysterious events happening to a U.S.-based Korean family, earned $5.80 million between Friday and Sunday.

“Kung Fu Panda 4 ” stayed at the top of the North American box office in its second weekend in theaters. The Universal and DreamWorks Animation movie earned $30 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.The franchise featuring the voice of Jack Black is responsible for over $1.9 billion at the box office since it launched in 2008 and spawned several animated series, shorts, video games and a holiday special.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief South Korean cinema-goers will get a three-day jump on the rest of the world when the Bong Joon-ho-directed “Mickey 17” releases in January 2025 in time for the Lunar New Year holidays. Warner Bros. Pictures says that the Robert Pattinson-starring sci-fi film will open in Korea on Tuesday, Jan.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Pleasant Outcast,” a 10-part Korean series that is set to appear at Canneseries next month, is a companion piece to “Concrete Utopia,” the hit film from last year that was selected as South Korea’s Oscar contender. Both the Lotte Cultureworks series and “Concrete Utopia,” a dystopian drama-thriller set in a post-apocalyptic Seoul, are adapted from best-selling webtoon “Cheerful Outcast,” by Kim Soong Nyung. The film was frequently compared to William Golding’s seminal novel from the 1954 “Lord of the Flies” and its 1964 film adaptation. Using the first part of the webtoon, the series follows Dong-hyun, a high school junior, who barely survives his day-to-day bullying at school.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Dune 2” launched in mainland China cinemas this weekend with a solid $19.9 million three-day haul. That put it in second place, narrowly behind holdover crime-drama “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon.” Data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway, showed that “The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon” earned $21.3 million (RMB151 million) between Friday and Sunday, for a 10-day cumulative of $54.1 million (RMB384 million).

LOS ANGELES — As Universal Pictures prepared for a big night at the Academy Awards with “Oppenheimer,” the studio also celebrated the No. 1 debut of “Kung Fu Panda 4,” which collected $58.3 million in domestic theaters over the weekend, according to estimates Sunday.“Kung Fu Panda 4,” the first film in the DreamWorks Animation franchise since the third installment in 2016, got off to a better start than all but the 2008 original.

Warner Bros/Legendary Entertainment’s Dune: Part Two held strongly in its sophomore session at the international box office, adding $81M to handily cross the $200M overseas milestone, and reaching $367.5M globally.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Kung Fu Panda 4” topped the domestic box office, earning a solid $58.3 million from 4,035 theaters in its opening weekend. It marks the biggest debut of the franchise since the original, 2008’s “Kung Fu Panda” ($60 million), overtaking the start of the two prior entries, 2016’s “Kung Fu Panda 3” ($41 million) and 2011’s “Kung Fu Panda 2” ($47.6 million), not adjusted for inflation. Internationally, the fourth film in the martial arts-inspired animated comedy collected $22 million from 41 markets for a global tally of $80 million.

J. Kim Murphy It’s been nearly three months since an animated wide release hit theaters, the last being Illumination’s “Migration” over the holidays. That’s a little bit frightening, but with some expert timing “Kung Fu Panda 4” has arrived, benefitting from a lack of competition for family audiences to score some strong numbers in its debut.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief This month’s Hong Kong International Film Festival will showcase over 190 films from 62 countries and regions, including five world premieres, and 64 Asian premieres. Running 12 days (March 28 – April 8), the festival will open with the Asian premiere of local director Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well,” which won the Teddy Award at the recent Berlin festival.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran mainland Chinese director Zhang Yimou is to be honored twice over at the Asian Film Awards ceremony on Sunday. He will be presented with a lifetime achievement award and a separate prize for directing the highest-grossing Asian film of 2023.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief EST N8, the film and TV sales venture formed by U.S.-based EST and Thailand’s N8 company, has hired Chatsuree ‘Chat’ Sripamorn for an Asian sales roles. Reporting to Tenten Wei, she will represent the company at next week’s FilMart. Sripamorn has previously worked at three of the top Thai entertainment companies Mono Next, GMM Studios and Rose Studio over a span of ten years.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Exhuma,” a locally produced occult drama-thriller, expanded its domination of the South Korea box office on its second week of release. That left the newly-released “Dune 2” several sand dunes behind in second place. “Exhuma,” about two shaman, a feng shui master and a mortician who attempt to undo the mysterious events happening to a U.S.-based Korean family, earned $17.2 million between Friday and Sunday, representing a 69% share of the overall box office market.

Last week saw the global launch of Denis Villeneuve’s second “Dune” film, wrapping up the conclusion of the first novel adaptation while also leaving everything on a cliffhanger for a third movie that the filmmaker is co-writing with franchise screenwriter Jon Spaihts. Strong critical responses and audience word of mouth have paid off big time for the film as it has made some history over the weekend, becoming the biggest opening for the director and overperforming compared to the first part that was released back in September 2021.