'Black Widow' tops weekend S. Korean box office for 2nd straight week

Marvel Studios' latest movie, "Black Widow," sat atop South Korea's weekend box office for the second consecutive week, data showed Monday.

The superhero blockbuster attracted over 445,000 people over the Friday-Sunday period, bringing its combined total to nearly 2.14 million in less than two weeks since its release on July 7, according to data from the Korean Film Council.

It became the fourth title released in 2021 to surpass the 2 million threshold, following the action film "F9," the Japanese animated film "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train" and the Disney-Pixar fantasy "Soul."

"Black Widow" is expected to soon become the most-viewed film of the year to date here, overtaking the current No. 1, "F9," which has sold over 2.28 million tickets since its release on May 19.

The Korean-Thai horror project "The Medium," which topped the daily chart Wednesday and Thursday, ranked second at the weekend box office, attracting 305,000 moviegoers.

The American psychological thriller "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions" ranked third with 78,000 attendees, followed by Disney's live action film "Cruella" and the homegrown action flick "Hard Hit."

The total number of theater visitors over the weekend was 941,000, or about 76 percent of the 1.23 million tallied the previous weekend before the greater Seoul area was placed under the toughest virus curbs amid recent spikes in COVID-19 cases.

Last Monday, the government imposed the strictest Level 4 social distancing measures for two weeks in the area, requiring all movie theaters to close before 10 p.m. (Yonhap)