The Korean director’s zombie thriller crosses $32 million in its third weekend while ‘Wild Sing’ opens strong with a chaotic K-pop comeback story audiences clearly needed.
Yeon Sang-ho doesn’t make films that let go of an audience quietly. Train to Busan held on for years after its release in ways that surprised even its distributor. His latest, Colony, appears to be doing the same thing.
For the third consecutive weekend, the zombie-thriller dominated the South Korean box office — pulling in $4 million from 603,868 admissions during June 5–7, according to KOBIS data from the Korean Film Council. The film’s cumulative haul now sits at $32.6 million from nearly 4.73 million total admissions. In a market where attention spans and release windows have compressed dramatically in the streaming era, those numbers represent genuine staying power.
The film stars Jun Ji-hyun, Koo Kyo-hwan, and Ji Chang-wook in a thriller that tracks a hive-mind virus spreading inside a mall — a concept that sounds almost too on-the-nose for post-pandemic audiences, yet has clearly landed. Yeon’s particular gift for using genre mechanics to expose social anxiety is as sharp here as it was in Busanhaeng, and Korean audiences have rewarded the film’s ambition with 44.35% of the weekend’s total revenue share.
The new entry worth tracking is Wild Sing.
Son Jae-gon’s comedy opened in second place with $2 million from 321,188 admissions — a healthy debut for a film built around one of the more relatable premises in recent Korean cinema: a disgraced first-generation K-pop dance trio, two decades past their prime, attempting a chaotic comeback after a scandal broke up the group. The film’s cumulative gross already sits at $3.4 million from 543,722 admissions, suggesting the opening weekend had strong legs and positive word of mouth driving return business.
There’s something almost perfectly timed about Wild Sing‘s arrival. The global conversation around K-pop legacy acts, nostalgia IP, and what happens to first-generation idols has never been louder. Groups from the late 2000s and early 2010s are staging reunions; documentaries about idol training culture have found international streaming audiences. Wild Sing slides into that conversation with the advantage of comedy — it can tell uncomfortable truths about the K-pop machine without anyone having to brace themselves.
Elsewhere on the chart, Backrooms held third place at $1.3 million (cumulative: $5.5 million), while the Michael Jackson biopic Michael continued its slow, steady crawl through the Korean market, adding $433,526 to bring its local total to $11 million from over 1.54 million admissions. Not a breakout, but a respectable cultural footprint.
The virtual K-pop boy group Plave made an interesting appearance at No. 10 with a concert film documenting their arena encore showcase at the Gocheok Sky Dome — Place Asia Tour [Dash: Quantum Leap] Encore in Cinema. The film debuted with $120,669 from 8,061 admissions for a cumulative $342,446. For anyone still skeptical about whether audiences will pay theatrical prices to watch virtual idols perform on screen: they will.
The Mandalorian and Grogu sat at sixth place with a cumulative $1.5 million. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie — the film that just crossed $1 billion globally — added $72,680 to bring its Korean total to $10.3 million.
The overall weekend market came in at $9.1 million, down from $11.9 million the previous week. A correction after a strong run, not a cause for alarm.
