Korean blockbuster The Roundup: No Way Out suffered a 50% week-on-week decline, but it was still strong enough to see a pair of Hollywood newcomers.
The third part of the Don Lee-starring Roundup franchise, No Way Out earned $5.16 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council. It accounted for a 42% share of the market and attracted 650,000 additional spectators.
After three weeks in cinemas, its cumulative including previews now stands at $68.9 million, earned from 8.91 million spectators. That makes it the biggest film of the year (ahead of Japanese animation Suzume on the $44 million mark) and one of only three Korean-produced films in this years top ten.
On this pace, No Way Out should reach the 10 million ticket sales mark of a mega blockbuster in Korea, but tit is unlikely to surpass last years second instalment. That released in the same time slot and earned $100 million from 12.7 million ticket sales.
Landing in second place over the latest weekend, Disney / Pixars Elemental earned $3.31 million between Friday and Sunday from 422,000 ticket sales. Over its full five-day launch period, the animation grossed $4.0 million from 516,000 spectators.
The Flash opened in third place. With a 20% market share, it took $2.48 million over the weekend proper and $3.57 million over five days.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which had opened second a week earlier, slipped to fourth. It earned $608,000, down 74% on its opening. After 12 days in Korean cinemas, Beasts has a $5.69 million cumulative.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 pulled in $139,000 for fifth place and a running total of $34.4 million since release on May 3.
No other film accounted for more than a 1% share of the market and the nationwide box office retreated to $12.4 million, down from $14.4 million a week earlier.
Last week, it was reported that police had raided the offices of Koreas three major exhibition companies and three distributors in connection with possible mis-reporting of box office and revenue data to Kobis. It has subsequently emerged that the investigation is in connection with reporting of data on three specific films rather than whole market.