‘Master’ dominates Christmas-weekend box office

SEOUL, Dec. 26 (Yonhap) — South Korean action thriller “Master” dominated the local box office on its first weekend, drawing over 2 million viewers, data showed Monday.

According to a real-time based box office tally from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), “Master” has collected an audience of about 2.2 million over the Dec. 23-25 weekend, making a strong No. 1 debut on the weekend box office chart.

The film starring big-name actors Lee Byung-hun, Kang Dong-won, Kim Woo-bin and Oh Dal-su surpassed 3 million in the accumulated number of viewers on Sunday, the fifth day of the run.

It depicts the intellectual war among a notorious con man, his sly right-hand man and a police investigator over a major financial scandal.

A still cut from the Korean action thriller “Master”

Illumination and Universal’s animated musical “Sing” landed at No. 2 of the chart, attracting 497,609 moviegoers, pushing South Korean nuclear disaster film “Pandora” to third place.

“Pandora” added 429,129 viewers to its domestic tally of about 3.9 million in attendance.

Hollywood musical movie “La La Land” ranked No. 4 with 378,930, and Korean fantasy drama “Will You Be There?” based on the French novelist Guillaume Musso’s best-selling 2006 work of the same name rounded out the top five with 181,211.

This image provided by UPI Korea shows a scene from the animated musical “Sing”