International Round Up: It’s Alive! The Box Office is Alive!

July 2, 2020

Innocence

For the first time in months, there is a real reason to be optimistic about the box office, at least internationally. South Korea became the first market to have an unqualified success since the beginning of the pandemic. Several other markets saw increased box office at the weekend, including France, Spain, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Here are all the details.

In South Korea, #Alive, a local horror film, opened in first place with $5.22 million on 1,882 screens over the weekend for a five-day opening of $7.36 million. It made almost as much during its three-day weekend as last week’s champ, Innocence, made in three weeks. It was the first film to sell more than 1 million tickets during its opening since February. This is about the same as a $50 million debut in North America. Granted, it didn’t have a lot of competition, but it is still worth celebrating. Overall, the top ten this weekend was just over double what it was last weekend at $8.2 million. This is still far less than half of what the box office pulled in the same weekend last year, but there were no Hollywood blockbusters to lead the way and almost no depth. Hollywood studios may be looking at this result and decide to release some of the long-delayed blockbusters in South Korea in an attempt to generate some publicity ahead of PVOD releases in countries that are still mostly locked down.

France was the other major market that reopened this past weekend. Granted, it isn’t fully open, but there were $4 million in tickets sold in less than 700 theaters, which is a great sign. Furthermore, the number one film was La bonne epouse, which was previously released in March. This is a great sign that if a major movie was released in this market, audiences would show up.

Japan was up from from last weekend, albeit by less than 2% at $1.5 million. I was really expecting solid growth this week, as Sonic the Hedgehog debuted in the market, finally. Given the film’s success here and elsewhere, and the fact that the character was created in Japan, I would have expected a much bigger opening than $473,000 in 289 theaters over the weekend. It wasn’t even able to unseat Dolittle for top spot, as that movie pulled in $727,000 in 348 theaters for a two-week total of $3 million.

Spain saw amazing growth, but it still has a way to go before it has fully opened up, as less than a quarter of its roughly 800 theaters are open. This past weekend, the top ten shot up 175% to $286,000. Onward led the way with 63,000 over the weekend for a $2.1 million running tally. Hong Kong also saw strong growth with its top ten up 71% to $1.24 million, led by a local hit, Legally Declared Dead, with $347,000 in 59 theaters, putting it just ahead of last week’s winner, Onward.

There were a number of markets that has smaller improvements, like Taiwan, with its top ten up 35% to $486,000. Australia and New Zealand were both up 17% with $175,000 and $288,000 respectively. This is impressive, as neither country had new releases (although Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs had previews in New Zealand.) Italy also grew a similar amount, up 16% to $76,000 over the weekend, led by Les Misérables.

It wasn’t all good news for major markets, as Germany continued its decline, this time down another 14% to $333,000 over the weekend. That’s less than half of what it earned the same weekend last year.

Filed under: International Box Office, Onward, Dolittle, Sonic The Hedgehog, Les misérables, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs, La bonne épouse, Gyeolbaek, #salaissda