No more ticket wars. Concert, musical films head to multiplex cinemas

Booking tickets online for a K-pop idol concert or a top-selling musical show, which sell out in several minutes or even seconds, is stressful. The high ticket prices, hovering above 100,000 won per ticket, are also agonizing. But at multiplex cinemas here, you can enjoy the exact same concert or musical on a large screen right in front of you and on an even-better sound system at just one-third of the price.

In recent years, local multiplex cinema chains CGV and Megabox have been screening concert films and even musical films in an attempt to bring back moviegoers and attract fervent K-pop fans and musical buffs.

Popular singer Lim Young-woong’s two concerts in May, which attracted a combined 100,000 people at Seoul World Cup Stadium, have been condensed into 108 minute-long documentary film “Lim Young Woong: Im Hero the Stadium,” screening exclusively at CGV.

Since the movie’s August release, CGV has recorded about 8.7 billion won in sales. To keep the momentum going, CGV decided to add special live clips in addition to the movie and screen it exclusively at CGV theaters in October.

In September, CGV opened “Jung Kook: I Am Still,” a documentary film that follows Jungkook of BTS and his performances in New York, London and Seoul for his first-ever solo single, “Golden.” The 97-minute-long movie also includes behind-the-scene interviews conducted over eight months.

While the movie amassed 15.3 billion won in sales in just 10 days of its release, CGV has newly released a singalong version of the movie by adding a 20-minute-long music video clip at the end.

Megabox, the country’s third-largest multiplex cinema operator after CGV and Lotte, has been focusing on bringing musical shows to the big screen.

“Elisabeth: The Musical Live,” which depicts the life of Elisabeth von Wittelsbach, empress of Austria-Hungary (played by musical actor Ok Joo-hyun), will open exclusively at Megabox on Wednesday. The movie is an edited version of a recording of the musical’s 10th-year anniversary performance.

“We have applied the Dolby Atmos sound system to the movie to deliver three-dimensional sound, to better convey the actors’ powerful vocals and beautiful melodies,” said a Megabox official.

While some point to the relatively higher cost of these concert and musical movies — “Lim Young Woong: Im Hero the Stadium” costs 35,000 won at Imax and “Elisabeth: The Musical Live” is priced at 29,000 won for the Dolby Atmos edition — market experts said these movies will soon play a pivotal role in the movie industry.

“Concert or musical films screening in cinemas go through a special pricing process with negotiations between the production firm and the distributor, but considering that the cost adjustment is aimed at offering a higher quality movie, (such movies) may become a breakthrough for cinema operators,” said an official from a local movie distributor firm who declined to be named.