Wow! These South Korean films prove that superstars don't guarantee a box office hit

MUMBAI : While we stay engrossed on our mobile or TV screens while watching our favorite South Korean dramas, we don’t really go out to watch the movies in theaters (one reason is not every film gets released in India).

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However, it seems the South Koreans are not walking up to their nearest theater halls as well to watch their favorite stars’ projects. Nowadays, the old saying is getting proved that having superstars in a movie does not guarantee box office success.

That’s what happened with Song Joong-ki‘s Hopeless and Uhm Jung-hwa’s ‘Miss Fortune,’ as according to Korea’s integrated ticket network, the movies were released on October 15 and 11 and saw only a mere 130,000 and 40,000 accumulative viewers, respectively.

Song Joong-ki, who is popularly known for his K-dramas Descendants of the Sun and Vincenzo, has returned to the big screens after 2017, where he featured in The Battle Island with Hopeless.

However, even though the movie has such star power, it didn’t surpass the box office collection of ’30 Days’ that was released a week earlier. According to a report in KBIzoom, till now, Hopeless has seen approximately 30,000 people, which is only a quarter of ’30 Days’ 130,000 audience.

Uhm Jung-hwa’s fortune with her movie ‘Miss Fortune,’ is even worse as it slipped down from third position in the box office list to fifth the next day of its release. The actress had made her way in the audience’s hearts with her performance in Doctor Cha but it seems her magic isn’t working for the movie.

As per Egg Index (Egg Index is one of the most trusted critic ratings by Korean audiences) ratings, Hopeless and Miss Fortune stand at 77% and 65%, respectively.

On the other hand, Song Kang-ho’s Cobweb and Ha Jung-woo’s Road to Boston, which aimed at the audience during the Chuseok festival, tasted the bitterness of the box office.

But at the same time, Kang Ha-neul and Jung So-min’s rom-com ’30 Days’, which was considered to be the weakest, showed a huge grip over the box office success. It maintained its spot for 12 days and even surpassed 1 million viewers till now.

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As quoted in KBIzoom, a multiplex theater official explained, , “In the atmosphere where the audience’s interest in Korean movies has dropped significantly, the most important thing has become ‘word of mouth’ of real audiences, not star appearances. ’30 Days’ also attracted more audiences in the second week than in the first weekend thanks to word of mouth.”

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Credits - koimoi