Foreign films have returned to the way they were before the pandemic, but Korean films are still cut in half.
According to the financial report released by the Korean Film Council on the 15th, foreign films from January to April saw an increase in movie theater admission fees, as well as the American blockbuster 'Avatar: Waterway', which had a high proportion of special screening sales, and the Japanese animation 'Suzume', which attracted attention for its high quality. Thanks to the box office success of 'Door Break' and 'The First Slam Dunk', cumulative sales reached KRW 247.1 billion, recovering to 93.8% of the average (KRW 263.4 billion) for the same period from 2017 to 2019. The cumulative number of foreign film audiences from January to April 2023 was 22.78 million, which was 71.9% of the average (31.69 million) for the same period from 2017 to 2019. Sales increased compared to before due to the rise in movie ticket prices.
In particular, Japanese animation achieved outstanding results in the first quarter, recording sales of 113.3 billion won and the number of viewers 10.85 million.
On the other hand, Korean movies are less than half of what they were before the pandemic. The Youngjin Committee cited △failure to differentiate △film manpower going to OTT as the reasons.
Korean film sales in April were 16.9 billion won, which was only 53.1%, or about half of the average Korean film sales from April 2017 to 2019 (31.8 billion won). The number of Korean movie audiences was also 1.73 million, accounting for 43.8%, less than half of the average number of Korean movie audiences (3.95 million) from 2017 to April 2019.
In relation to this, the Youngjin Committee said, "In a situation where audiences have become more cautious in choosing movies due to the increase in movie admission fees, two Korean movies with similar themes were released at the same time and did not succeed in differentiating themselves, so Korean movies did not achieve remarkable results in April." and analyzed.
The sports film 'Rebound' (directed by Jang Hang-jun), based on a true story, ranked 4th in April's overall box office box office with sales of 6.2 billion won (650,000 people), and 'Dream' (directed by Byung-hun Lee), which ranked 5th in overall box office, is also a sports film based on a true story. The movie generated sales of 5.2 billion won (540,000 people) in April.
It was found that Korean movies were unable to exceed the 1 million monthly audience figure for three consecutive months from February to March. The Youngjin Committee said, "As film production personnel began to participate in the production of OTT movie videos, the competitiveness of OTT original content was strengthened, and Korean films released in theaters this year were also not chosen by young audiences."
Choi Ji-ye, Ten Asia Reporter wisdomart@tenasia.co.kr