CG-animated dragons attack Los Angeles in D-War, a new Korean monster movie breaking local box office records. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the pic scored the country’s biggest Wednesday opening ever by raking in $2.8 million. The locally produced movie’s performance is significant since it has been able to compete with the wave of Hollywood blockbusters that has flooded the international market in the last couple of months, driving the Korean film industry’s market share to its lowest point since 2001.
Echoing the premise of the 2002 Disney film Reign of Fire, D-War is based on a Korean legend which holds that dragons will return one day devastate the planet. The movie has a good chance of making money in the U.S. as well since it features a mostly western cast. Jason Behr (Skinwalkers, The Grudge) stars as a reporter who is investigating the occurrence, leading a cast that includes Robert Forster (Firewall, Jackie Brown) and Aimee Garcia (The George Lopez Show).
It’s a bit odd but monsters now represent hope for Korean filmmakers. D-War follows on the heels of the critically acclaimed creature feature The Host (Gwoemul), which became the country’s highest-grossing film ever and put most recent Hollywood attempts at horror to shame. The host is now available on DVD in North America and remake rights have been bought by Universal Pictures.
Korea’s most expensive movie to date, D-War was budgeted at $32 million, but the CG animation and other visual effects reportedly drove that number up to around $75 million. The film’s performance has exceeded the expectations of distributor Showbox, which also released The Host last year. Showbox now expects to sell as man as 2.5 million tickets for D-War by the end of the weekend. The movie will be released on approximately 1,500 screens in the U.S. on Sept. 14.
