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Sets New Opening Weekend Benchmark by over 40%
 

The Admiral: Roaring Currents, a blockbuster epic bringing the exploits of Admiral Yi Sun-shin (played by CHOI Min-sik) during the legendary Battle of Myeongnyang to the screen, had a colossal five-day debut, setting a number of new records by wide margins in the process. With 3.35 million admissions (USD 25.94 million) recorded over Friday to Sunday, the film set a new opening weekend benchmark, surpassing Transformers 3’s record of 2.37 million (set in 2011) by 41%.

 

The period epic has set a number of new milestones since its Wednesday debut, starting with biggest opening day (682,797 viewers, USD 4.57 million). The film set new daily milestones for Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, as well as the best non-holiday Thursday. On Saturday it became the first film to attract over one million viewers (1.23 million viewers, USD 9.5 million) in a single day. Sunday saw Roaring Currents beat its own record by becoming the biggest single day for a film in Korean history with 1.25 million admissions (USD 9.71 million), it was also the first time that a film generated over KRW 10 billion in a single day.

 

Roaring Currents also set new records for biggest three-day (2.28 million viewers, USD 16.54 million), four-day (3.51 million viewers, USD 26.04 million) and five-day (4.76 million, USD 35.74 million) totals as well as becoming the quickest film to 2, 3 and 4 million admissions, reaching those marks in three, four and five days, respectively.

 

Accounting for 67.4% of all ticket sales, Roaring Currents led the weekend to a massive total of 5.06 million admissions. This made it the biggest weekend at the Korean box office and the first time a weekend has attracted over 5 million viewers (roughly 10% of the country’s population).

 

After recording the second biggest opening weekend for a domestic film (now down to third), last week’s big winner, Kundo: Age of the Rampant, slowed 75.7% to 515,664 viewers and third place. The film has brought in 4.47 million spectators (USD 33.66 million) in 12 days. Hanging in at number two was Hollywood animation How to Train Your Dragon 2, which fell only 22% for 575,116 admissions, bringing its total to 2.11 million viewers (USD 16.62 million) in 12 days. Also opening this weekend was the new Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy, which only managed fourth place with 459,816 spectators (USD 3.83 million).

 

Wednesday will see the release of The Pirates, the third big-budget period film in a row, but at this point reservations indicate that The Admiral: Roaring Currents should retain its position atop the chart.