Forgot password

 

 

Roaring Currents outperformed Avatar(2009) in Korea’s all-time box office. Several Korean films attempted to break Avatar’s record only to fail before the release of Roaring Currents this summer. Roaring Currents’ box office performance was even radical. The sea battle saga surpassed 10 million audiences in 12 days since its premiere and broke Avatar’s record in 18 days since its release. Ten days later, the film also eclipsed Avatar in ticket sales since the prices of tickets to Avatar were higher than those of 2D films as it is a 3D film. Roaring Currents is heading for an 18 million viewer. This figure is 4 million viewers more than that of Avatar and the gap is widening little by little. What makes Roaring Currents special is not the size of its ticket sales but the speed of its box-office run. Let’s check how much time films took to reach ten million audiences, a symbol of mega hits in Korean cinema. The Host was the most commercially successful Korean film before Roaring Currents. But Roaring Currents reached the milestone ten days earlier than The Host.

 

 

What is the reason for the success
Roaring Currents is based on a legend-like historical fact. Admiral Lee Sun-shin is one of the greatest national heroes in Korea. Most Koreans heard about the Battle of Myeongnyang at least once. Winning the battle was nearly unthinkable. But it was a truly miraculous victory for Korea. Audiences wanted to watch spectacles of the victory and by allotting the half of its running time to battle scenes, Roaring Currents catered to audiences.

An important point is that this film shows an overwhelming victory. This point is very important to Korean audiences these days. Over the past several years, the Korean people have ceaselessly felt a sense of defeat from the sinking of the Sewol Ship or corruptions of high-ranking officials. The Korean people came across Roaring Currents while suffering from such a sense of helplessness. So, the film approached them not as a historical record but like a messiah-themed fantasy. This past summer, historical summer blockbusters such as KUNDO: Age of the Rampant and The Pirates deal with periods without the proper operation of the government system.

Finally, let’s adopt a different approach here. Since 2012, a film has chalked up more than or nearly ten million admissions a season.   As a result, to put it the other way around, films that drew over ten million spectators have powered the Korean film industry. Roaring Current peaked in this environment. In particular, ticket sales account for 80% of total sales in the Korean film industry. This fact will fuel competition among Korean films to become mega hits in the future. This situation produced a correlation between the sizes of budgets and genres. This year’s box-office standings substantiate this fact. In Korean box-office standings from January to August this year, four of the top ten films are period films, each of which recorded a production budget of ten billion won or more. Today, the main genre of Korean cinema is spectacular period films just as Hollywood studios set their sights on super hero franchises or fantasy adventures.

 

 

The emergence of ‘ArtBuster’
And then, It should be noted that ‘ArtBuster’. This word, a combined word of art films and blockbusters came out for the first time three years ago. A HONG Sang-soo film performed better than expected in the box office, ‘Artbuster’ was born. The word is finally exploded in 2014 as Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) directed by Wes ANDERSON recorded about 700,000 admissions. The next and really big thing was Begin Again. As of September, the film surpassed 2.3 million audiences. Its ticket sales in Korea (about US$17.62 million) outnumbered its U.S. Begin Again raked in the most money in Korea among countries where the film was released. In addition to its quality, the success of this film is an indication that Korea has a music film market that is bigger than expected. The success of Begin Again & Grand Budapest Hotel is expected to expand ArtBuster Syndrome.