After a tough six months, the South Korea box office has received a boost as My Daughter Is A Zombie scored the biggest opening weekend of the ye
After a tough six months, the South Korea box office has received a boost as My Daughter Is A Zombie scored the biggest opening weekend of the year to date.
The local comedy-drama took $8.3m from 1.17 million admissions from August 1-3, according to Korean Film Council (Kofic) tracking service Kobis. It has earned $12.5m from 1.87 million admissions since it opened on July 30.
It marks the highest opening weekend figures for a film in South Korea so far this year, topping the $7.12m made by Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 in February and the $5.64m taken by Jurassic World Rebirth when it opened last month.
My Daughter Is A Zombie is already the tenth highest grossing film of 2025 in South Korea and there is speculation the film could become the first of the year to hit 10 million admissions – widely considered the benchmark for major success at the Korean box office.
Set in the wake of a zombie outbreak, the story follows a father who takes his infected daughter to a silent seaside village. There, he draws on his experience as a wild animal trainer to do the impossible – tame a zombie.
The father is played by Cho Jung-seok (Exit) and the cast reunites stars Lee Jung-eun and Cho Yeo-jeong from Oscar-winner Parasite. Based on a webtoon of the same name by Lee Yun-chang, it marks the second feature of director Pil Gam-sung after 2021’s Hostage: Missing Celebrity.
South Korea’s Contents Panda has already sold the feature to distributors across Asia and in North America.
The performance delivered some much-needed confidence to the theatrical business in South Korea, which recorded a major downturn in the first six months of 2025.
According to a recent report by Kofic, box office revenue declined 33% year-on-year to $293m (KRW480bn) in the first half of 2025, with attendance down 32.5%. The top performers were US blockbuster Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which earned $24m from 3.39 million admissions and local crime action title Yadang: The Smith, which made $23.1m from 3.37 million admissions.
In a bid to attract viewers back to theatres, the Korean government recently issued 4.5 million cinema vouchers, offers a KRW6,000 ($4.34) reduction on tickets.
The weekend’s box office saw Brad Pitt’s F1 continue to hold robust after more than a month on release, adding $3m from 384,964 admissions for a cume of $23.8m from 3.1 million admissions.
Korean animation The King Of Kings rose to third of its third outing, adding $966,000 over the weekend for a cume of $6.9m. The faith-based feature opened in most other territories in mid-April and has taken more than $70m worldwide, of which $60m is from the US.
After a robust start, local fantasy action fantasy Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy fell to fourth place on its second weekend with $708,000 and 116,475 admissions taking its cume to $6.7m (973,990 admissions).
On its opening weekend, US animation sequel The Bad Guys 2 took $770,000 from 115,377 admissions for a cume of $1.3m (201,134 admissions) since opening on July 30.
In total, the top 10 films took $15.2m from August 1-3 to achieve the highest weekend total of 2025 to date.
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