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Police investigations, “ghost showings” and political intrigue – it has all the ingredients for a dark original film for which South Korea is famous. But the drama in Seoul has centered on the film industry itself and accusations that box office performances of hundreds of films have been inflated.
The anti-corruption unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency raided three theater chains including CGV, Megabox and Lotte Cinema and three distributors in recent months, and handed over 69 people to prosecutors, accusing theaters of colluding with distributors to inflate ticket prices. More than 323 films have been sold over the past five years.
According to the police agency, as many as 2.67 million counterfeit movie tickets were sold, including declaration of emergencya 2021 disaster blockbuster, and passionatea 2022 crime thriller.
South Korea’s burgeoning film industry wins international acclaim as director Bong Joon-ho wins 2020 Best Picture Oscar for dark comedy parasiteIts domestic market has been struggling since the start of the pandemic.
Unlike many other developed markets, South Korea’s most important box office metric is attendance, not revenue. As a result, tickets are often given away or sold at a low price to distributors and corporate sponsors to boost attendance and box office rankings, leading to early morning or late night “ghost screenings.” This allowed the producers to break the 10 million entry barrier, which they considered a success in a country of 52 million people.
“Theatrical sales declined during the epidemic, [cinema chains] We started asking for multiple promotions,” said Goh Young-jae, director of distributors at Indie Plug. “As a distributor, it was hard to say no to their requests, given our concerns about getting proper screen time. “
“It’s an open secret in the film industry that theaters and distributors issue and buy a large number of promotional tickets to drive initial sales, which is the key to a film’s performance,” said a local film director. “The decades-long practice has been made worse during the pandemic as theaters struggle to attract audiences.”
Industry exec claims police investigation partly due to ‘accidental epidemic’ red herring, A crowdfunded documentary about former justice minister Cao Guo’s attempt to reform the prosecutor’s office. Attendance at the screening was lower than reported, police said. “The investigation also appears to be politically motivated,” said film critic Oh Dong-jin.
The culture ministry has asked the state-run Korea Film Commission, which collects local box office data, to be more transparent. “The controversy over box office manipulation has undermined public confidence in the local film industry,” Culture Minister Park Bo-gyun said last month. “The industry needs to come up with a variety of measures to restore public confidence.”
Promotional screenings accounted for less than 5 percent of total attendance, according to estimates from the Korean Film Council. “Korean filmmakers are more eager to attract theater audiences early to break even, so they have an incentive to release more promotional tickets as part of viral marketing,” said an official from the Korea Film Council. , there is no way to make up for the loss with other sources of income.”
Even before the police investigation, Wu said, the industry had faced increasing calls to change box office metrics. “It’s a bit of the old-fashioned way. As the Korean film industry has gone global, it’s time to follow global standards,” he said.
CGV and Lotte Cinema said they were cooperating with the police investigation and that their theaters had agreed to stop late-night “ghost showings”. Megabox declined to comment.
