Weekend Box Office Still Down... Only 230,751 Visitors

Continued Decline... Box Office No.1 Movie Haru's Daily Audience Drops to 30,000 Range

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jonggil Lee] The weekend movie theater audience continued to decline due to the impact of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19). According to the Korea Film Council's integrated ticketing system, the number of visitors to theaters over the two days last weekend (March 7-8) was 230,751. This is a decrease of 55,650 from the first weekend of this month (February 29 - March 1), which had 286,401 visitors. It did not even reach half of the 506,124 visitors from the previous weekend (February 22-23).

This is due to the spread of COVID-19. As people avoid crowded places, the number of viewers has sharply decreased. New releases have been postponed one after another, narrowing the range of choices. Movie theaters have no sharp solutions other than providing hand sanitizers and conducting disinfection work. Having significantly increased the number of screens, they suffer from huge burdens such as rent and labor costs.

Movies are also wearing a gloomy face. "Invisible Man" topped the weekend box office with 66,972 viewers but had only about 30,000 viewers per day. The cumulative audience is 314,598. This is a modest figure for a leader over twelve days. The situation is no different for second place "1917." It has consistently been in the top ranks since February 19 but has a cumulative audience of only 538,686. Last weekend, it attracted just 48,105 viewers. Third place "Beasts Clawing at Straws" also only gathered 23,926 viewers. Other top 10 films such as "Little Women," "Honest Candidate," and "Wolf Call" all had daily audiences below 10,000.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.