Award winning director Park Chan Wook's film The Handmaiden broke a new record on its opening week in Korea, garnering nearly $11 million.
The rated-R movie, which was released in local theatres on Wednesday, attracted more than 1.8 million viewers, setting the bar higher for Korean films.
According to Soompi, The Handmaiden surpassed the 2015 film Inside Men, which held the top rated R-film record in the Korean box office with about 1.6 million viewers on its first week in theatres. It also beat the previous record of Marvel's superhero mercenary Deadpool with 1.7 million viewers in its opening week.
Park Chan-wook's thriller was also named the best-selling Korean film of all time, outpacing the previous sales record of Bong Joon-ho's English-language sci-fi film Snowpiercer, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Set on the backdrop of Korea and Japan during the Japanese colonial era, The Handmaiden is a bodice-ripper tale of a Korean gold digger, posing as Japanese count Fujiwara, who attempts to seize the wealth of a young Japanese heiress. The count hires a pickpocket who disguises as a handmaiden and takes part of the plan. It is an erotic thriller based on a novel by Sarah Waters entitled Fingersmith.
The cast of the film includes Kim Tae Ri, Kim Min Hee, Ha Jung Woo, and Jo Jin Woong.
The deviously kinky thriller was screened at the recently concluded 69th Cannes International Film Festival. Even before it was presented in Cannes, the movie was already pre-sold to around 120 countries.
Kini Kim, Executive Vice President International at CJ, attributed the success of the movie to Park Chan-wook's award-winning, international reputation, noting that it managed to attract a huge crown despite the language barrier.
