As CJ ENM's solo release strategy and the An Jung-geun cheat key failed to work, they even announced a change in the breakeven point.
According to the statistics from the Korean Film Council's integrated ticketing system on the 12th, ‘Harbin’ (directed by Woo Min-ho) attracted 134,708 viewers the previous day, bringing its cumulative audience to 4,062,055. Throughout the weekdays, daily and pre-booked audience numbers hovered around 40,000 to 50,000, struggling to surpass the 4 million mark just in time for the weekend.
Released on the 24th of last month, ‘Harbin’, starring Hyun Bin, depicts the intense pursuit and suspicion between those heading to Harbin for a single purpose in 1909 and those chasing them. The breakeven point is approximately 6.5 million.
Following the solo release of ‘Veteran 2’ (directed by Ryu Seung-wan) during the golden holiday in September, CJ ENM continued its ‘vacant house robbery’ strategy with the year-end solo release of ‘Harbin’.
CJ ENM, which has faced box office failures with every release in recent years, managed to attract about 7.5 million viewers with ‘Veteran 2’ using this strategy. At that time, the prevailing opinion was that ‘not reaching 10 million means it cannot be considered a success,’ but for CJ ENM, it was a positive outcome.
Riding that momentum, they ambitiously released ‘Amazon Herbal Medicine’ at the end of October, but once again faced a box office flop. At that time, similar budget films like ‘The Love Law of Big Cities’, ‘Ordinary Family’, ‘Don’t Touch Dirty Money’, and ‘Amazon Herbal Medicine’ were released sequentially with a week apart, but the film with the largest budget, ‘Amazon Herbal Medicine’, had to exit in tears. The film's breakeven point was about 2.5 million, but it only managed to gather around 600,000 viewers.
In the case of ‘Harbin’, the breakeven point is much higher, so a more stable strategy was necessary. Initially, it clearly worked.
With locations in Mongolia, Latvia, and Korea, the film's scale received praise for being visually appealing, and the actors' performances were applauded. However, there were many criticisms regarding the ‘story’, and opinions on the direction were sharply divided. While the film's theme and message were timely, the overall evaluation of its details was generally disappointing.
All of this contributed to the film attracting a remarkable 380,000 viewers on its opening day, proving its high buzz, but the CGV Golden Egg Index, which was 99% before the screening, plummeted to 88% within a day. This was the lowest figure among the films in the box office top ranks at that time (‘Mufasa: The Lion King’ 93%, ‘Firefighter’ 93%, ‘Moana 2’ 92%). The real viewer ratings and netizen reviews on Naver were in the 7-point range.
On the second day of release, it reached 1 million viewers, 2 million on the fifth day, and 3 million on the ninth day, showing strong performance. It seemed to benefit mainly from weekend and holiday specials, but as it entered a downward trend, it recorded single-digit audience numbers and pre-bookings during weekdays. This was in stark contrast to the upward trend of films like ‘Spring in Seoul’ and ‘The Grave’, which gained momentum and attracted more viewers as they progressed.
As it became increasingly difficult to surpass the breakeven point, CJ ENM announced that they had successfully secured overseas sales and additional rights contracts, lowering the previously announced breakeven point to 5.8 million. It is rare for a film to change its breakeven point during the middle of its run in this manner. Many films focus on various promotions during their theatrical run to ensure they recoup their costs, but they do not typically lower and announce the breakeven point.
Through various content sales and additional processes like IPTV revenue after leaving theaters, they strive to recover losses even if the theatrical performance is disappointing. Fundamentally, films are produced with theatrical release as the goal, and the initial breakeven point is based on theatrical revenue, so it is not common to reverse this. Even if they later recover losses through other routes, they humbly accept the disappointing results from the theatrical run.
Of course, CJ ENM has previously lowered and announced the breakeven point in a similar manner for ‘Broker’ when it underperformed at the box office, in an effort to shed the stigma of ‘not even breaking even’. At that time, they also could not surpass the breakeven point based solely on theatrical revenue.
All eyes are on whether CJ ENM's desperate all-out effort will pay off and what the final score will be.
