Japanese animated hit “Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island” took the South Korean box office for a third straight weekend, while two new Hollywood releases opened quietly. The Toho-distributed film earned $2.8 million from 378,474 admissions on 1,181 screens from Oct. 16 to 18, according to figures from the Korean Film Council’s tracking service, KOBIS. That gave it 42.7% of all ticket revenue, a share that tightened its grip on a shrinking market. The weekend total fell to $6.7 million from $10.5 million the week before. Since its Sept. 30 release, “Chiikawa” has grossed $14 million from 1.83 million admissions.
The film’s run has already set records. Reports last week said it had overtaken “Avatar: The Way of Water” as the highest-grossing foreign release in Korean box office history. It drew nearly three times as many viewers as its closest rival on one recent weekend, a local political thriller, “The Assassin(s).” That film has faced protests, defamation complaints and legal challenges from conservative groups and families of the people depicted. Nineteen local film guilds issued a joint statement defending creative expression, and “The Assassin(s)” has crossed three million admissions with $23.7 million in revenue.
“Chiikawa,” adapted from a webcomic that began in 2020 as a comic strip by illustrator Nagano, follows the title character and friends who take a too-good-to-be-true job on a remote island. A Seoul office worker told the Korea Herald the film is cute first, with a dark streak running through it.
New releases struggled for attention. 20th Century Studios’ ocean survival thriller “Whalefall” opened in fifth place with $300,004 from 38,637 admissions on 621 screens, a 4.4% market share. Paramount and Legendary’s “Street Fighter,” the top film worldwide this weekend, landed in eighth with $122,148 from 16,813 admissions on 523 screens. Its global opening of about $51 million fell short of an expected $70 million, with turnout concentrated among older fans, according to reports. The weak numbers for both Hollywood debuts left the market to local and Japanese titles. With the weekend total down about 36%, “Chiikawa” faces little new competition in the short term.
