Korea Box Office (May 9-11): Speed Racer Races to No.2

May 13, 2008 by Hallyuwood
Filed under News

Iron Man continued its impressive run grabbing more than US$ 18 million at the Box Office and for once, I cannot more than agree with the hype. I watched Iron Man yesterday at the CGV theaters in Yongsan and this is one of the rarest instances where I can remember a film that is even better than the original source (in this case, Iron Man is a comic book series from Marvel). If you’ve ever read the old Iron Man comics, then this latest incarnation surpasses that of the original and is really worth spending your KRW 7,000 (around US$7.00) movie ticket on.

Alas, though Iron Man did well, the same can’t be said for Speed Racer which opened strong on opening day (Thursday in Korea) but couldn’t sustain its run to the top and had to settle for No. 2 — Speed Racer could be suffering from some bad publicity over in the US where the critics haven’t been so kind to the movie with only a dismal rating of 35% from the critics (poor Rain). With that said, I’m still rooting for Rain and owe it to him to still watch the movie. Plus, it’s still one of the very few movies where you can see it in the IMAX format here in Korea so I plan on watching it, bad reviews or not.

Three Korean movies occupies the top 10: Moonlight in Seoul, Tale of the Legendary Libido and the newest addition, Can You See Seoul? (this is btw, the literally translation “서울이보이냐” and it remains to be seen whether this is the official English title). Moving out of the top 10 is The Chaser however I’m sure it won’t be long until we see it again as a Hollywood flick so stay tuned.

For those who’ve been following this Box Office post, I’ve included some changes: readers can now see the official ‘Korean’ movie posters, which if your used to seeing the titles in English, are different and kinda cool IMO. I’ve also now included a link to the official Korean website on each of the movie titles so visit the sites if your curious on how your favorite foreign (aka non-korean movies) are being shown in Korea.

* Update: I’ve double checked and the official English title of the movie Can You See Seoul is called Unforgettable.

This Week (1-10)	Title	Release Date	Screens Nationwide	Weekend Revenue	Total Revenue
	Iron Man	4.30	617	4.85	18.02
	Speed Racer	5.08	485	2.41	2.74
	Taken	4.09	303	0.99	13.54
	Forbidden Kingdom	4.24	300	0.62	7.22
	Horton Hears a Who	4.30	344	0.52	3.16
	Moonlight in Seoul	4.30	306	0.60	4.07
	Priceless	5.08	124	0.36	0.41
	Tale of the Legendary Libido	4.30	309	0.19	1.62
	Unforgettable	5.08	165	0.14	0.17
	Detective Conan: Phantom of Baker Street	5.01	41	0.13	0.53