▲ This photo shows a movie theater. (Yonhap)

 

▲ This photo, provided by Showbox, shows a poster of "Emergency Declaration" which was supposed to release last month. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

 

SEOUL, Feb. 7 (Yonhap) -- While the Korean box office failed to make headway during the New Year holiday due to the spread of COVID-19, Korean films haven’t scheduled their official releases.

Distributors and theaters explain that great Korean films need to be released to save the movie industry in crisis and the government should support movie openings and abolish restrictions on theater business hours.

A total of 1,364,000 people visited the theater during the Lunar New Year holiday (Jan. 29 ~ Feb. 2), according to the KOREA Box-office Information System. It is about 180,000 less than the number of audiences during the previous Chuseok holiday (Korean Thanksgiving) in September last year.

"The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure” and the political drama “Kingmaker” attracted about 649,000 and 357,000 audiences, respectively. The two works, ranking first and second in the box office, barely exceeded 1 million viewers.

Considering how the two works are Korean masterpieces that came after a long time, their performances are somewhat disappointing. In the second week of its release, the real-time reservation rate has fallen, making it difficult to expect a big increase in the audience in the future.

The problem is that new Korean films are not expected to be released until next month, even after the end of the first quarter.

In particular, there is no tent pole (a commercial film with a clear success) that has invested more than 7 billion won in production costs for famous directors and actors, so it is estimated that Korean films will be hit by a difficult period.

According to Yonhap News coverage, “Hero” (Director Yoon Jae-kyun), “Hansan” (Kim Han-min), “Alien” (Choi Dong-hoon), “Boston 1947” (Kang Je-gyu), “The Moon” (Kim Yong-hwa), and “Smugglers” (Ryoo Seung-wa) have finished filming but did not schedule the release date.

Upcoming films such as the “Emergency Declaration,” “Confidential Assignment 2: International,” “The Match,” “The Point Men,” “The Roundup 2,” “Bogota: City of the Lost,” and “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” also don’t have a specific release date.

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