Korea Box Office: Low Attendance Adding Quota Issues to Cinemas’ Mounting Woes

Adding $30 million on Thursday from 4,336 locations, “No Way Home” has a domestic box office total of $386 million and $876 million worldwide, passing the $821 million total of the Chinese film “Hi, Mom” for second place on the global charts for the year.

It’s going to be a really rich Christmas for exhibition, Sony and Marvel as Spider-Man: No Way Home barrels toward potentially the third best 2nd weekend ever with around $143M over the long Christmas period of Dec. 24-27.

Coming into the weekend, everyone knew “Spider-Man: No Way Home” would break pandemic-era box office records. Previously, the biggest debut was with “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” which earned $90 million over its first three days back in October.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Spider-Man: No Way Home” shrugged off new health restrictions in South Korea to earn the biggest box office opening weekend since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.The film earned $15.0 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council.

Rebecca Davis editorIn another quiet weekend in China, Korean War blockbuster “The Battle at Lake Changjin” was at last eased out of the top five for the first time since its Sept. 30 debut.

Holdovers Drive My Car, Red Rocket and The Scary Of Sixty First looked good in limited runs on a weekend with few new specialty releases and even fewer numbers. Streamers – which presented The Lost Daughter (Netflix), Swan Song (Apple) and The Tender Bar (Amazon), don’t reveal them and smaller distributors often report early in the week.

Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed an estimated $5.28M in Korea on its first day today. This is significant for a number of reasons: Korea has been extremely soft of late, yet the launch day is 11% over the first day of 2019’s pre-pandemic Spider-Man: Far From Home and is the biggest day-one figure for any title of the pandemic era.

Naman Ramachandran Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed musical “West Side Story” and beloved canine mascot-hero property “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” were neck and neck for pole position at the U.K. and Ireland weekend box office.Disney release “West Side Story” topped the charts with £1.297 million ($1.72 million), while eOne release “Clifford the Big Red Dog” was just behind with £1.293 million ($1.71 million), according to numbers released by Comscore.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterSteven Spielberg’s long-delayed “West Side Story” remake collected $800,000 in previews on Thursday night. Even with a slower start, the musical is expected to pirouette to the top of box office charts this weekend.The Disney and 20th Century Studios film is expected to generate $10 million to $15 million in theaters.

“West Side Story,” Steven Spielberg’s remake of the beloved movie musical and Broadway show, brought in $800,000 at the box office in Thursday preview screenings that began at 5 p.m. It opens on over 2,800 screens this weekend.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterIn 1961, “West Side Story”  dominated the box office and swept the Oscars.Now, six decades later, Steven Spielberg’s long-delayed remake of the beloved musical, in theaters on Friday, looks to also find itself in the awards race after receiving rapturous reviews.

After a year’s delay due to the pandemic, Steven Spielberg’s remake of the Broadway classic and 10x Oscar-winning 1961 movie, West Side Story, finally tunes up this weekend as the sole wide major studio theatrical release in 2,800 U.S./Canada theaters and offshore debuts in France, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Russia and UK. All in, the global outlook is $22M-$31M, with $12M-$17M coming from domestic and $10M-$14M from abroad. The 20th Century Studios-Amblin production is being released by Disney.

Broadway box office settled back to its pre-Thanksgiving levels last week, with grosses for the 29 shows totaling $26,214,735, a 19% drop from the previous week’s holiday take.

Naman Ramachandran Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci,” starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver, continued atop the U.K. and Ireland box office in its second weekend.

Endeavor Group Holdings CEO Ari Emanuel dismissed the recently announced acquisition of ICM Partners by CAA as “the type of merger we did 10 years ago.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefAction-adventure film, “Schemes in Antiques” grabbed the top spot at the mainland China box office with a solid $25.6 million debut.It deposed crime comedy “Be Somebody” which had topped the chart for the past three weekends and earned $13.3 million in its fourth weekend, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” crept into the background at the South Korean box office over the weekend, as the top three films remained unchanged.Nationwide aggregate revenue was a lowly $5.06 million as audiences avoided cinemas ahead of new health restrictions.Cinemas, along with bars, restaurants, gyms and museums, are among the high-risk places affected by a new tightening of health measures in Korea, intended to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of the

Neon and Participant opened animated documentary Flee to a $25,033 debut in four locations. That makes for a strong per-theater average of $6,258 ahead of a rollout early next year for the much-decorated Danish film ahead of Academy Award nominations Feb. 8.