From Busan to the UK: How New Releases Are Performing at the Box Office

The 31st Busan International Film Festival is under way and runs through October 15, with Michelle Yeoh honored on its opening night, according to Screen Daily. Away from the festival, new releases in South Korea and the UK have been testing the market in recent weeks.

Seoul: A Remake Takes the Top Spot

The Korean remake of The Intern, starring Choi Min-sik and Han So-hee, opened on September 16 and led the weekend of September 18 to 20 with 275,183 admissions and about $1.9 million. That ended a six-week streak for The Odyssey, which has earned $91.2 million from 11.2 million admissions in Korea, Screen Daily reports. It was the first Korean film to top the chart in 50 days, according to Gulf News.

The original The Intern, released in 2015 with Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, was a comedy-drama about a retired widower who becomes a senior intern at a fashion start-up. Reworking that premise for Korean audiences with two prominent local stars appears to have paid off, at least for an opening weekend. The milestone is as much about the drought as the film: for nearly two months, no Korean film had held the top position at the box office, and a domestic release finally broke through.

What the Numbers Say About Ticket Prices

The figures also offer a glimpse of how different the economics are between markets. The Odyssey’s Korean total works out to a little over $8 per admission, while the remake’s opening weekend averaged closer to $7. Those are rough calculations from the reported totals, and they blend premium formats, discounts and exchange-rate movements, but they show why admissions are the figure Korean industry reporters watch most closely. A film can be described as a hit by the number of people who bought tickets, regardless of the dollar conversion.

For The Odyssey, 11.2 million admissions is a substantial figure in a country of about 51 million people, and it confirms the film held its audience across a six-week run at No. 1.

The Chuseok Effect

Over the Chuseok holiday, Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub opened on September 23 and crossed one million admissions with $7.5 million in its first week. Chuseok is one of Korea’s biggest holidays, a harvest festival when families gather and cinemas typically see strong attendance, so distributors often schedule big releases to coincide with it. The Tazza series is built around high-stakes gambling stories, and reaching a million tickets in a week shows that the franchise name still draws viewers.

That Tazza opened a week after the The Intern remake and still reached seven-figure admissions quickly suggests that the Korean market had room for more than one domestic hit at the same time.

Crossing to Britain: Verity Leads the Weekend

Verity opened at No. 1 over the weekend of October 2 to 4 with £3.40 million, according to the Film Distributors’ Association. The thriller is based on Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel, a source that has already proved popular with readers, and the opening suggests that following carried over to British cinemas. Digger opened fourth with £1.09 million, and the Bollywood sequel Drishyam: The Conclusion opened eighth with £471,160.

Seen in proportion, Verity accounted for roughly a third of the weekend’s top-15 total, while Digger took about a tenth. Resident Evil took second place in its third weekend and has earned £11.24 million so far, which means a franchise film in its third frame was still outperforming two of the weekend’s new releases. You can read about the US results in our reports on Verity’s debut and Digger’s second weekend.

A Soft Weekend Overall

The Undertow reports that the top 15 films earned £10,976,221 over the weekend. That was down 26% from the week before and the seventh-worst weekend of the year. A 26% decline implies the previous weekend’s top 15 took in roughly £14.8 million, so the drop represents several million pounds in lost business.

Avengers: Endgame Encore had the biggest drop, at 83%. Encore releases of older films often perform as short-term events, drawing fans in the first days and then falling away quickly, so a decline of that size is not necessarily a sign of weak interest. Spider-Man: Brand New Day has now earned almost £100 million in the UK, which keeps it among the year’s most successful releases in the market even as newer titles take the top slots.

Two Markets, Two Stories

Comparing Seoul and London shows how different the picture can look from one territory to another. In Korea, the story is a local title breaking a long run by a foreign blockbuster, followed by a holiday release reaching a million tickets in days. In the UK, the story is an adaptation of a popular novel leading a weekend that was weaker overall than the one before it.

The two markets also illustrate how much the calendar matters. Korea’s release schedule is shaped by Chuseok, while British releases cluster around school breaks and major franchise dates. A film opening against a holiday can post figures that would be out of reach on an ordinary weekend, so comparisons between territories are best made carefully.

A Note on Reading the Charts

Box-office numbers come from several different reporting bodies, and each uses its own methods. Korean figures are tracked mainly through admissions, while UK weekend results are compiled by the Film Distributors’ Association and then repackaged by trade outlets and independent roundups. Early weekend totals can be revised once final data arrives, and the currency conversions attached to Korean grosses will shift with exchange rates. Readers comparing films across the two countries should treat the dollar and pound figures here as snapshots, not as exact like-for-like measures.

On the Release Calendar

The Social Reckoning and The Uprising open in UK cinemas this weekend. Street Fighter, Whalefall and Forgotten Island follow on October 16, according to Screen Daily. With five new titles arriving across two weekends, the market will get a quick test of whether audiences are looking for fresh options after a below-average stretch.

At Busan, the festival continues through October 15, giving international buyers and programmers a look at Korean and Asian films that may eventually reach audiences abroad. Festival attention and box-office results are separate measures, but they often overlap in the long run, since a title that earns acclaim in Busan can find an audience in markets far from South Korea.