South Koreait is box office continued its strong run powered by “Avatar” into a fourth weekend, with overall revenue exceeding $15 million from the first Friday through normal Sunday of the New Year.

Avatar: The Way of the Waterremained in the top position it has enjoyed since its release in mid-December. But there were strong showings for the local title “Hero” and for the new version “The First Slam Dunk”.

“Avatar 2” took in $6.42 million in its fourth weekend of release, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). This was a 51% weekend-over-weekend decline after two previous weekends when the film had done extremely well and benefited from the Christmas and New Year holidays. Since its released on December 14, 2022, the title has now racked up a total of $87.8 million. Its market share fell to 42% over the weekend, the first time it has fallen below half since its debut.

“Hero,” a historical drama depicting Korean anti-Japanese activists in occupied Manchuria, retained the second spot it has held since its Dec. 21 release. It grossed $2.62 million in its third weekend of release and claimed a 16.8% market share. to share. Made by a consistent hitmaker, JK Younthe film now has a cumulative total of $17.5 million.

The Japanese animated film “The First Slam Dunk” was the best novelty of the weekend. It earned $2.61 million over the weekend and enjoyed a 16.7% market share. In the five days since its Wednesday debut, it has earned $3.49 million.

Two more new titles followed. “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” opened with $1.69 million over the weekend and $2.40 over its five-day opening. “Switch,” produced in Korea, earned $1.10 million over the weekend and $1.78 million over five days.

The Japanese title “Even If This Love Disappears From The World Tonight” continued its run, despite being released on November 30, 2022. It grossed $459,000 at #6 for a seven-year total of $6.53 million. weekends.

“The Night Owl,” which topped the Korean chart for three weekends prior to the release of “Avatar 2,” took seventh place with a weekend score of $151,000. After seven weekends on release, it has a cumulative $26.0 million.

“Shinbi’s Haunted House: The Dimension Ghost and the Seven Worlds” added $132,000 in its fourth weekend, for a cumulative $3.14 million.

Korean-made “Gentleman” quickly dropped from third place a week earlier to ninth place. Revenue dropped 90% as it took $84,000, for a 12-day run-up of $1.62 million.

There was a tenth-place finish for George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” which fetched $52,000 between Friday and Sunday, and $99,000 in its five-day run.

The weekend’s domestic total weighed in at $15.6 million, a level barely seen between September and November but one that was vastly surpassed under “Avatar’s” reign. It remains to be seen whether the Korean public has rediscovered the habit of going to the cinema.

The annual box office in 2022 increased by 96% to KRW 1.16 trillion, compared to a disastrous 2021 (and a slightly worse 2020). The market share of Korean films returned to above half, at 56%, restoring the normalcy that had been maintained for a decade until 2021. In terms of admissions, the year-on-year gain The other was 87% (from 60.5 million in 2021 to 113 million in 2022), revealing the impact of slightly higher ticket prices.

But last year’s Korean box office recovery has not been consistent. After a slack summer, revenues fell in the fall months. Commentators pointed to a weak supply of new titles, but also growing competition for consumers’ time and wallets, especially from the country’s hyper-competitive streaming video industry.

And although 2022 was an improvement over the previous two years, the gross box office lagged 39% compared to 2019, when total revenue was KRW 1.91 trillion and Korea was the fourth largest box office in the world.

The strength of the US dollar against the Korean won is also undermining the overall value of the Korean cinema market. Using year-end conversion rates for each year, the Korean film market size expressed in dollars was $1.65 billion in 2019, $496 million in 2020, $492 million in 2021, and $922 million in 2022 – the latter being a 45% shortfall from 2019.

In terms of cinema admissions, the contrast between Korea’s pre-COVID era and present is also stark: total attendance in 2022 was just 49% of 2019’s 227 million.