With 3,550,902 Viewers in Total, Giving Green Light to Korean Theater District Overcoming the Pandemic

The Roundp

The super powerful punch of ‘Monstrous Detective’ created an amazing box office hit, breaking the COVID-19 Pandemic. Starring Don Lee, a crime action The Roundup, released on May 18 (Wed), recorded 2,534,224 audiences with sales of USD 21.2 million on its first weekend. It is overwhelming 1st place in the box office, accounting for 86.2% of the weekend sales. As of May 23 (Monday), its total number of viewers is 3,550,902.

The record both surpassed Marvel's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with 1.71 million viewers on the first weekend and 3,497,393 viewers in total in the first week. The Roundup also marked the highest box office record in the first week of release for both Korean and overseas films since Frozen 2 (2019) before the COVID-19 Pandemic. In addition, The Roundup even surpassed the record set by Extreme Job (2018) with 3,139,563 viewers in the first week of release, which recorded the second-largest box office hit in Korean film history. Considering that the final audience number of Extreme Job (2018) is about 16 million, the final result of The Roundup is also noteworthy. 

Particularly, The Roundup is also meaningful in that it heralded the successful birth of a new ‘criminal franchise.’ The total number of viewers for the first episode THE OUTLAWS was 6.88 million, whereas The Roundup set a remarkable record only in five days, surpassing more than half of the total audience of the first episode. The Roundup has a variety of elements of box office success, including the confrontation between the monstrous detective Don Lee plays and a new villain Son Sukku plays, who is very popular through My Liberation Note, a recent TV show, and the rhythmical comedies between intense chasing scenes.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which topped the rank for 2 weeks in a row, dropped to 2nd place. With 328,097 viewers over the weekend, it has 5,472,112 viewers in total as of May 23 with the total sales of USD 45.9 million. 

Following Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, DreamWorks' animation The Bad Guy and the Japanese animation Butt Detective the Movie: The Secret of Souffle Island are maintaining 3rd and 4th, respectively. 5th place was won by the Korean documentary Song of the Poet released on May 8, which depicts the music and the life of Cheong Taechoon, a legendary Korean folk singer.

The powerful box office success of The Roundup has given a green light to recovery in the Korean theater district, which was in a slump by the COVID-19 Pandemic. The next hitter to revitalize Korean theaters along with The Roundup will be Jurassic World: Dominion, a Hollywood franchise which is scheduled to be released on June 1. With the return of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, the sales rate of the sequel exceeded 30% 9 days before its release.