The release of South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 in major Chinese cities has sparked debate about a potential thawing of China’s long-standing restrictions on K-content
The dark comedy sci-fi premiered in China on March 7, following preview screenings in seven cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen on March 2, taking $1.3m from 8 million tickets.
Despite being a US-South Korea co-production with a primarily western cast, Bong is the first South Korean filmmaker in four years to have a film officially released in China. In April last year, director Jang Jae-hyun’s horror blockbuster Exhuma was screened during the Beijing International Film Festival but did not receive a public theatrical release.
Since September 2016, Beijing has restricted the distribution of K-content content in China, an apparent response to geopolitical tensions surrounding the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea in 2017. Beijing has never officially acknowledged the existence of any such restrictions, which have become known as the “Korean wave ban”.
The release of Mickey 17 has fuelled ongoing speculation about a potential shift in China’s cultural policies, especially after South Korea’s national assembly speaker Woo Won-shik met with Chinese president Xi Jinping during the opening ceremony of the Harbin Winter Asian Games on February 7.
It was reported that they discussed expanding access to South Korean cultural content in China, with president Xi acknowledging the importance of such exchanges and the need to prevent conflicts.
However, some cautioned that the film’s release does not mean an end to the ban.
“Despite being directed by a South Korean filmmaker, Mickey 17 is primarily a Hollywood production, featuring an international cast and backed by US studio Warner Bros. – making it more of a Hollywood project than a purely Korean film,” Korean culture critic Kim Hern-sik told Screen.
Based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton, the film stars Robert Pattinson alongside Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo. Set in the future, the movie follows a disposable, “expendable” worker who is cloned every time he dies for research purposes.
Box office leader
Bong’s third English-language film after 2013’s Snowpiercer and 2016’s Okja led the South Korea box office for a second consecutive weekend, surpassing 2 million viewers.
Mickey 17 took $3.85m from 562,206 admissions from Friday to Sunday (March 7-9), accounting for more than 65% of all ticket sales and bringing its total to $14.6m from 2.1 million admissions. It is the second film released in Korea this year to surpass 2 million viewers, following homegrown action-comedy Hitman 2, which recorded 2.54 million admissions.
The film’s strong box office performance is expected to continue until the end of the month, with no major competitors until the March 26 release of sports drama The Match, starring Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun.
Mickey 17 also topped the North American box office on its opening weekend with an estimated $19.1m, bringing its worldwide total to $53.5m.
However, these figures are slightly below market expectations. The film’s opening weekend earnings fell short of its projected $20 million target, while the film’s distributor and investor Warner Bros. has to recoup its substantial $118 million production budget through box office revenue alone.
Bong’s biggest hit to date remains Oscar-winner Parasite, which grossed $53.8m in North America and $262.6m worldwide, including a massive $71.4m in South Korea.
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