Jang Nara’s Sky and Ocean flops big at box office
Ouch. Jang Nara’s latest film, Sky and Ocean [하늘과 바다], hasn’t just flopped at the box office, it put in a decidedly miserable showing in last place in its opening week. It seems these days we’re hearing about new films breaking records by bringing in millions of viewers in a single weekend (examples: Take Off, Haeundae, Chaw), but Sky and Ocean fell short of even 10,000 audience members in its first weekend. To be specific, it drew 9,952 viewers.
Shown on 224 screens, that means each theater only drew 44 to 45 people; that amounts to 4.51% of the market share of overall theater attendance. Counting the rest of the week (it premiered on October 28), the total ticket sales add up to 13,715 for a total revenue of 90.5 million won (approximately $72,000). In contrast, the big winner was Jang Dong-gun’s Good Morning, President in its second week in first place; it commanded 57.9% of the market share and drew on average 245,000 viewers per day.
That’s too bad, because I don’t really think the film was promoted that strongly. There had been a brief splash of news months ago as the film began shooting, and a small number of Jang Nara interviews in the week leading up to the premiere, but that’s all I saw. Then again, the movie may seem cute, but in an almost generic sort of way:
In the film, Jang Nara plays a genius violinist named “Haneul” (or Sky), while singer-actress Juni plays “Bada” (or Ocean). (I’d originally translated the title “Sky and Sea,” but it appears the production has used the word “Ocean” instead; too bad, since I was drawn to the alliterative reading of “Sky and Sea,” which seems to roll off the tongue more readily.) Yoo Ah-in (Yoo! Ah! In!) rounds out the trio of unlikely friends in the music-themed coming-of-age story.
The film was produced by Jang’s father Joo Ho-sung, himself a theater and film actor. Mixed with some praise for Jang’s performance were accusations of favoritism leveled at Joo, although those criticisms have since faded.
Via Newsis
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Tags: box office, Jang Nara, Juni, Yoo Ah-in
Oh no.. this is the movie that Jang Nara’s family invested like all their money into, right?
I was watching the episode of KangShimJang and she was like pleading to people to watch the movie and make it successful because if not her family would then be broke.. her dad basically would like send her off to do more work whenever they needed more money O_O;;
lol probably a little over exaggerated.. but still!
Is the movie that bad? Or is it just a case of the right story at the wrong time in theaters?
In the US, this would be promoted and expectations leveled as if it was an Indie movie. On the upside, I don’t much like Jang Nara, but that picture of her in the poster is adorable and gorgeous. The movie looks cute actually, maybe it’ll have a nice cult following on DVD.
I am reminded of Homer Simpson, who tries valiantly to understand marketing and get more people to go to the bowling alley.
He starts with a book about advanced marketing, which is too difficult, and tosses it for a book on beginning marketing, which is still too difficult, and so he gets a dictionary to learn what the word “marketing” means. Homer ends up standing outside the bowling alley with a shotgun and shooting in the air and trying to get people to go bowl. Disaster.
Homer notes in a voice-over: “My plan drew a record number of police and firefighters, but very few stuck around to bowl.”
When I see things like this, I wonder whether there are companies that do marketing analysis to see whether projects will be successful.
$72,000 on 224 screens for its FIRST week? Not quite oranges to oranges, but that’s Freddy Got Fingered territory. “Freddy Got Fingered,” long after it was panned as one of the worst films ever made, made $116,000 in 272 screens, in its FIFTH week showing…
Korean audiences sure are fickle.
Freddy Got Fingered is a total guilty pleasure of mine. It is so so so so so so bad that it almost, almost makes its way back to mediocre. I’ve watched it sober so many times and laughed at it’s completely ridiculous humour. I have yet to watch it under the influence, which all my stoner friends say make the movie all that much better.
This reminds me of that Vanessa Hudgens movie, Band Slam, or something like that. There was all this uproar between the marketing company and the head of the film company. The head of the film company wanted to market it as a High School Musical type thing which is why it made so little money in theaters. Apparently the movie actually got pretty good reviews but because of the lousy way it was marketed, it did badly. The marketing department at Summit Media even wrote an angry letter about it:
Isn’t there a story here? Death by marketing? A movie that gets 80% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes — 90% from top critics — won’t see the light of day because Summit consistently made some of the worst choices, and their core audience summarily dismissed the movie without seeing it based on their sale.
Start off with the fact that they chose BANDSLAM for a title instead of WILL. They thought WILL was too indie. But that’s what made this movie special. It was an indie voice wrapped up in a high concept. So, instead of selling it quirky and cool (a la Juno) they sold it on the Disney channel’s Vanessa Hudgens and Aly Milchaka. Instead of selling the concept, band of outcasts like The Commitments, they Disneyfied this movie with glitter paint. So what is an ironic, smart script with a killer soundtrack was sold like High School Musical meets Phil Of The Future. Instead of embracing it for its quirky-ness, for its unique voice (Will, the lead, calls high school “Guantanamo Bay with a lunch period”) they flattened it out so it looked like everything else. There have been literally dozens and dozens of calls today and e-mails from heads of marketing at different studios saying this may be singly the worst job they’ve ever seen on a movie whose unique voice deserved to be heard through positioning, title, marketing tie-ins, and knowing your audience. But Rob Freidman and Summit infantalized their audience. They presumed that since HSM was a hit, and the same star was in their movie singing, they should just sell it the same way.
More of it can be found here: kydem.blogspot.com/2009/08/bandslam.html
I actually haven’t seen it, for the very same reasons listed in that letter. I thought it was going to be HSM 4 and didn’t want to watch.
A list of 10 Movie Marketing Blunders. Interesting read: movieblips.dailyradar.com/story/10_movie_marketing_blunders/
I don’t know the right place to put this…
There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about South Korea and racism. I think it would be an interesting topic for this site- but I don’t know if it is too political. (It has nothing to do with kdrama.)
I would love to hear Javabean’s thoughts…..
I HATE how thin she gotten she lost all that weight for this movie yet she looks so sickly.
@Samsooki. *checks what the devil Freddy Got Fingered is and…* OMG!
Marketing analysis companies do exist all over the world. I cannot believe that the K-entertainment, so prone to check obsessively ratings, doesn’t do their researches beforehand. It’d be a rather stupid move, if you ask me.
That said, Sea and Ocean actually intrigues me. Then again, I do love indie movies so maybe that’s my bias talking. ^^
LOL, Freddy Got Fingered got SO MUCH HATE. Oh man.
Roger Ebert gave the film a rare zero-stars rating and described the film’s humor thus:
This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels…The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny.
BUT THEN. . .
Seeing Tom Green reminded me, as how could it not, of his movie Freddy Got Fingered (2001), which was so poorly received by the film critics that it received only one lonely, apologetic positive review on the Tomatometer. I gave it—let’s see—zero stars. Bad movie, especially the scene where Green was whirling the newborn infant around his head by its umbilical cord.
But the thing is, I remember Freddy Got Fingered more than a year later. I refer to it sometimes. It is a milestone. And for all its sins, it was at least an ambitious movie, a go-for-broke attempt to accomplish something. It failed, but it has not left me convinced that Tom Green doesn’t have good work in him. Anyone with his nerve and total lack of taste is sooner or later going to make a movie worth seeing.
See? It’s so so so bad, it’s memorable!
Really sad. I like Jang Nara. She is one generous actress. I hope she recovers from this setback.
Btw, the other girl is from Beethoven Virus, right?
this movie… just from the preview actually remind me to a Japanese movie.. NANA….
2 different characters, which exactly how it was portrayed with the “sky” and “ocean” hmm…………..
i remembered reading somewhere..probably on allkpop about an award nomination controversy with ha ji won..where she wasn’t nominated for anything even though she had two movies come out this year and most of the cast members were nominated for something..whereas jang nara was nominated.
i’m not hating or anything, but seeing as the movie has flopped…i mean..come on…it’s like ha ji won…how could she NOT get nominated for anything especially with the success of her the haeundae and the rave anticipation of love by my side.
@6 Max,
yup, really interesting article… can you, uh, save it for Friday’s Open Thread, where we discuss anything and everything? it’d be perfect there!
LOL sounds like you’re a fan of yoo ah in! i thought he was ADORABLE in the man who can’t get married, but i only watched a few episodes before dropping it. it’d make my day if he somehow got into an episode of you’re beautiful, haha!
Yoo Ah In!! I loved him in Antique!
I always thought he should be in more dramas.
Ouch! This is terrible news indeed since Jang Nara was nominated for a prestigious award instead of Ha Ji Won even before Sky and Ocean was released right? I remember hearing something like this somewhere…Hmmm…this will be very interesting….
Just noticed your header…it has that dude from Hello Schoolgirl movie. I watched it this weekend…cried my butt off. I don’t remember the last time I cried watching a Korean movie. I tried watching You’re beautiful…it was cute but…
no offense nara fans but this doesn’t seem too interesting to me.
yoo ah in is really cute though
Being a hardcore Nana fan (although I might not be able to continue on with the manga any more… soooo depressing, it would be perfect for a K-drama remake), the only resemblance the two stories have together is the fact that one girl is cute, and the other is punk. That’s about it. But than again, Nana was not the first to have two female characters of completely different characters become friends.
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Is Jang Nara’s character really 20 years old?
To be honest, the preview didn’t impress me much. Maybe something I’d rent at a store over a weekend later, but if I wanted to have fun at the theaters, I’d understand why the audience would have chosen a different movie.
“Yoo! Ah! In!”
Cutiepie!!!! (Add him to the ICOMYM Club
)
Looking forward to his next project!
just remember of Ang Lee advised to Wang Lee Hom when Wang soak an advice from the expert… Mr. Lee’s advice was : “young man when you make a movie never use your own money.. trust me on this”
Aw, too bad, the movie seems cute. I love these kind of coming of age movies.
This I must say very surprising to me I frankly didn’t think it would be a huge hit, it is to off beat/arty for a mainstream film, but I certainly expected it to do a lot better than this, the numbers if it wasn’t so sad would be almost a joke.
They always been trouble with the production, thus the Jang’s having to put up their own money to finish it, and even then some of the film crew threatened to sue because they had not been paid. Then the fuss of its nomination for the upcoming awards and even talk of bribes, though if they didn’t have the money to finish the film how they are suppose to have money for bribes is beyond me.
It was nominated for four awards, best actress and best supporting actress so it clearly has something, the poor showing is almost to a shocking degree.
In regard to the lack of promotion, I would have to agree other than the fuss over its nomination over Ha Ji Won films its been very low key. Indeed what promotion its had was helped by a fan giving a gift of 85,000 US for that purpose.
Sadly I can see Jang Nara heading back to China and put all her efforts there rather than trying to split her effects between there and Korea. It must be remembered the idea of the project was to pay back her Korean fans for the support they have given to her while she was busy in china, she didn’t have to make it, she could have comfortably stayed in China and never be out of work.
Haha, it’s ok. With Jang Naras popularity they will make
all the money back if they re-release it in China lol.
Honestly, Jang Nara’s popularity in Korea isn’t that great anymore. I think she’s one of those cases that work abroad, but wound up not getting a break back in their own country.
@25: kinda agree with you on that. maybe in china this would get viewers.
YOOOOOO AHHHHH IINNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i would probably watch this somewhere just for that cutie pie.
“Coming of age”? Is she playing someone in her 20s or teens? WOW.
Jang Nara could never act and will never be able to act, period.
She irritated me to no end in Successful Story of a Bright Girl and Wedding, even though my two favorite male stars are in those dramas : Jang Hyuk and Ryu Shi Won.
Her singer can be put up with, but GOD.
Could someone erase her from the Korean entertainment industry.
@geekmuffin: that’s your opinion, which you are entitled to, but it’s also very subjective
i think jang nara can act; if you’ve seen her in some of the newer projects in China, you would agree with me that she can. i think what made you think ill of her wasn’t necessarily the person, but rather the character in her old Korean dramas. to be honest, her old dramas were terrible. i don’t know how her manager father chose her roles, but they didn’t suit her at all. in any case, she’s gain a large fanbase in China precisely because she started getting better roles and has a say in what series she wants to partake in.
im sure your opinion of her will change if you see her now.
Geekmuffin sounds like the anti netziens who write vicious comments without much thought and have helped many a Korean celebrity to tragic ends, Its fine to have an option but one really should take some responsibility to the possible results of such comments.
Of course Jang Nara been there done that over the last ten years so she hardly going to kill herself but I think people should be aware that words can and do hurt.
That said I can only hope its a matter of Koreans simply deciding what film should we see..’ow lets watch the big block bluster today and catch the arty/offbeat film next week’. It clearly not that is it a bad film or the acting was bad..I mean no one seen it first off to say..lol. But both the film and lead actresses have dominations for the Korean film awards, and the film committee have seen the film at a film festival a few months back. So there still hope for the film.
Considering all the trouble and fuss Sky and Sea has goon through, all it needs now is to win the awards while being a box office flop! Then stand back and watch the fur fly.
Can not resist Bright girl has to be arguable the most successful comedy/romance in Korean Tv history and has been copied endlessly since. While Wedding was a forgot jewel of K-drama TV…feel much better now.
jang nara is a very good actress even in her early years. love her and jang hyuk in successful story of a bright girl. that drama was what made me interested in kdramas in the first place.
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:O THIS MOVIE LOOKS GOOD! AWW~