The First Weekend of the New Year Freezes at the Box Office: "No New Releases Either"

149,955 Visitors Over Three Days... Overall Seat Sales Rate 3.9%
"Difficult to Rebound Until Next Month... No Government Support Either"

A movie theater in Seoul is less crowded than usual on the 7th, one day before the government implements the 2.5-level social distancing measures in the metropolitan area.
Photo by Moon Honam munonam@

The cold wave in theaters did not subside even on the first weekend of the new year. According to the Korea Film Council's integrated ticketing system for movie theaters, the number of moviegoers last weekend (January 1-3) was 149,955. The overall seat occupancy rate remained at 3.9%. Due to strengthened social distancing measures amid the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), foot traffic nearly came to a halt.

The anticipated film Wonder Woman 1984 also underperformed. Despite securing 55.8% of all seats, its sales rate was only 3.3%. It attracted 70,446 viewers, 66.7% fewer than the last weekend of the previous month (December 25-27). The cumulative audience count stands at 461,434. Excluding Wonder Woman 1984, only two films drew over 10,000 viewers during the three days: the new release Vanguard and the re-release Hwayangyeonhwa, with 11,968 (cumulative 22,348) and 11,784 (cumulative 59,799) viewers respectively. Jose (8,783 viewers; cumulative 195,434), Dogul (7,371 viewers; cumulative 1,530,885), Nightingale (5,258 viewers; cumulative 10,620), Bigfoot Junior 2: Family is Here (3,620 viewers; cumulative 3,620), and La La Land (3,002 viewers; cumulative 3,745,041) followed with poor performances.

This bleak trend may continue until the end of this month. Both domestic and international distributors are uniformly postponing the release of mid- to large-scale films. A theater official said, "Even Soul from Walt Disney Company Korea, which has already postponed its schedule several times, has yet to confirm its release date," adding, "It seems difficult to see a rebound until next month, which includes the Lunar New Year holiday." Another theater official stated, "Distributors are avoiding releases due to restrictions on operating hours," and "Without government support related to rent, difficulties are expected to intensify for some time."

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