Kim Do-young's local adaptation of the Nancy Meyers comedy outsold Christopher Nolan's holdover epic on ticket count but not on money, in a split weekend at the Korean box office.
Two different films can win the same weekend, depending on how you count. In South Korea, over September 18-20, that's exactly what happened.
The Intern, a local remake of Nancy Meyers' 2015 Hollywood comedy, topped the admissions chart with 275,183 tickets across 1,428 screens, good for 26% of the market and $1.9 million, according to data from KOBIS, the tracking service run by the Korean Film Council. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, already six weeks into its run, still pulled the bigger check. It finished second on admissions with 256,789 tickets but generated $2.3 million, enough for 30.7% of total weekend revenue.
Why the gap? Ticket prices vary by format and screen, and a holdover epic booked into premium formats tends to earn more per seat than a fresh local comedy on standard screens. So The Intern wins the room, Odyssey wins the wallet.
Directed by Kim Do-young for Warner Bros. Korea, The Intern stars Choi Min-sik and Han So-hee, and swaps the original's New York setting for a Seoul fashion startup, with a 70-year-old former executive taking a senior internship under a founder young enough to be his daughter. It's drawn 403,903 admissions and $2.8 million total since its September 16 wide release, three days in.
Odyssey, meanwhile, keeps compounding since its August 5 launch. Local gross now stands at $91.1 million from over 11.2 million ticket buyers, a number that's made the film one of the year's defining runs in Korean theatres regardless of who tops any single weekend chart.
Third place went to Obsession, holding steady in its third week with $1 million from 131,467 admissions, a 13.6% share that's pushed its cume to $5.4 million. Resident Evil opened at number four, taking $623,228 in its debut frame. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, eight weekends deep, is still hanging on at fifth with $214,082, its total now past $67 million.
Further down the chart, the coming weeks look busier. Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island is running preview screenings ahead of a September 30 wide release, already banking $202,845 off just over 21,000 admissions. Mamoru Hosoda's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time got a 20th-anniversary re-release bump, and a Digimon double feature has quietly crossed $138,000 in its first days back on screens.
And gambling thriller Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub, the franchise's fourth instalment, is testing the waters with festival and special previews before its wide bow on September 23. Early numbers, $60,860 off under 7,000 admissions, suggest distributors will be watching that Wednesday opening closely to see if the series still has pull.
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