South Korea’s box office received a major boost at the weekend as Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 landed the biggest opening of the year to date with $6.67m from nearly a million cinemagoers.
The sci-fi feature starring Robert Pattinson dominated the chart with 980,549 admissions from 2,153 screens, accounting for 69% of the total revenue share from February 28 to March 2, according to the Korean Film Council.
For comparison, second place title Captain America: Brave New World took $722,000 and generated a 7.5% rev share from 110,888 admissions and 732 screens. The Marvel film was the previous bigger opener of 2025 and has a cume of $10.5m since its release on February 12.
Mickey 17 is Bong’s first film since Parasite, which opened with $20.8m and grossed $59.8m at the local box office following its release in May 2019 and was the first Korean film to win the Cannes Palme d’Or and first non-English-language film to win best picture at the Oscars.
His latest is a US-South Korea production distributed by Warner Bros. and screened at the Berlinale last month. Released widely in Korea first, it will roll out in major territories including China, France, the UK and US this week.
The film’s strong opening in Korea was helped by a non-traditional Friday release and will surpass one million admissions today, which is an Independent Day Movement holiday across the country. Some $600,000 of the weekend takings came from just 27 Imax screens, representing 9% of the total, and Warner Bros is reporting a four-day opening total of $9m.
It is already the fifth biggest title at the Korean box office of 2025 so far, which is led by local action-comedy Hitman 2 on $16.4m from 2.5 million admissions.
The weekend saw the top 10 films in Korea generate $9m, more than double the $4.4m recorded at the previous weekend.
Further titles included Korean animated horror Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning, which ranked third and added $569,000 on its second outing for a cume of $1.78m.
In fourth, Korean romantic drama It’s Okay! took $186,000, taking its total to $337,000; while Studiocanal’s Paddington In Peru ranked fifth, adding $159,000 on its third outing for a cume of $571,000.
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