Park Chan-wook’s vampire film Thirst has topped South Korea’s box office, beating X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and clocking up the biggest opening for a local film so far this year

Released on April 30 on 633 screens, the Cannes-bound title has racked up more than 1 million admissions and grossed over $5.36m (KW6bn) during its five-day opening weekend (April 30-May 4), which coincided with a public holiday on May 1.

20th Century Fox Korea opened X-Men Origins: Wolverine on April 30 on 573 screens and the film took approximately 622,500 admissions, according to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), for third position in the chart.

KOFIC plans to have definitive box office scores out after the May 5 Children’s Day national holiday.

Distributed by CJ Entertainment and co-produced with Universal/Focus Features which will distribute in North America, Thirst is set for an international premiere in the Cannes competition later this month.

In its first five days, the film broke My Girlfriend Is An Agent’s eight-day record for the fastest leap to the 1 million admissions mark this year.

Despite Thirst’s 18 plus rating, the film’s big opening was expected due to the reputations of director Park and star Song Kang-ho (The Host).

When CJ first posted footage from the film weeks in advance, its web-site crashed from the flood of viewers. The film’s sexual and violent content, its selection for this year’s Cannes added to the buzz, along with news of Song Kang-ho’s full frontal nudity in one scene.

With Friday (May 1) and Tuesday (May 5) both national holidays in Korea, many offices took the “sandwiched day” Monday off as well.

Preliminary figures have My Girlfriend Is An Agent, distributed locally by Lotte Entertainment, at number two, followed by X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Insadong Scandal, which is distributed locally by SK Telecom, and Monsters Vs. Aliens, distributed by CJ in Korea.

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