《인턴》 Opens on 16 September Behind a Film From August and a Film From the Following Week

At 16:44 on Sunday 14 September, two days before it opens, the Korea Box Office Information System had 《인턴》 — the Korean remake of The Intern, with Choi Min-sik and Han So-hee — as the third most-booked film in the country.

#	Film	Opens	Share	Tickets
1	《오디세이》	5 August	27.1%	121,094
2	《암살자(들)》	23 September	16.0%	71,469
3	《인턴》	16 September	14.7%	65,659
4	《타짜: 벨제붑의 노래》	23 September	11.0%	49,379

Read the second column. The film above 《인턴》 opened six weeks ago. The film above that one opens a week after 《인턴》 does.

That is not the usual shape of an opening week, and it is worth taking the two obstacles in turn.

The wall: forty days at number one

《오디세이》 opened on 5 August. It crossed ten million admissions on 7 September — the tenth foreign film ever to do so in Korea — and through Sunday the 13th it stood at 10,782,703. It has been number one at the Korean box office for forty consecutive days and six consecutive weekends, which beats the thirty-five-day runs of Avatar: The Way of Water and Suzume.

It is now seventh among foreign films in the KOBIS all-time table, and the sixth-place film is Avatar: The Way of Water at 10,824,614. The gap is 41,911 admissions — roughly one more quiet weekday. Nolan's film took a third of all bookings on Saturday and is still taking more than a quarter on Sunday, in its seventh week.

《인턴》 is opening into that. We wrote about how the Yongsan IMAX queue got so bad it needed a law; the same film is now the thing every Korean release this month has to book around.

The overtaking: 69 tickets on Saturday, 5,810 on Sunday

The second obstacle is newer, and it happened this weekend.

On Saturday morning, 《인턴》 and 《암살자(들)》 — Hur Jin-ho's thriller, which opens on the 23rd — were both on 12.1 per cent of bookings, 69 tickets apart (60,212 to 60,143). By Sunday afternoon 《암살자(들)》 had moved to 16.0 per cent and 《인턴》 to 14.7, a gap of 5,810 tickets in the other direction.

A film that does not open for nine days is now out-booking the film that opens in two. Part of that is Toronto: 《암살자(들)》 had its Gala at TIFF and sold out every public screening — 4,256 seats. Part of it is simply that Korean audiences are pre-booking Chuseok now, and the 23rd is the busiest date of the season.

For 《인턴》, it means the film goes in with a week of clear air that is a good deal less clear than it looked.

The reviews agree with each other, which is the problem

The press screening was on 4 September at CGV Yongsan. The reviews that followed are unusually consistent, and the consistency is the story.

Every one of them praises the leads. And every one of them says the script is safe.

Cine21's four critics average 5.5 out of 10. 박평식, at 5, has the line of the week:

"향은 강하고 맛은 밍밍한 한식 뷔페."

"A Korean buffet: strong on aroma, bland on taste."

YTN's headline — harmless, therefore flat; safe, therefore complacent — and its verdict:

"원작이 지닌 미덕을 안전하게 옮겨 담는 데는 성공했을지 몰라도, 그 이상의 새로운 영화적 가치를 증명하는 데는 실패했다."

"It may have succeeded in safely transferring the original's virtues, but it fails to prove any new cinematic value beyond them."

TEN Asia: "원작의 그림자가 짙다" — the shadow of the original is thick — and, more precisely, "the story is excessively safe and the actors are far more alive than it is." 씨네플레이: the gaps are bridged "오로지 최민식의 호소력 짙은 얼굴" — solely by Choi Min-sik's face. Yonhap's English review, carried by the Korea Times: the performances are "a definite delight to watch," and "the narrative unfortunately fails to make the most of it."

Two dissents on the warm side: 세계일보's 뉴스1 review — the afterimage of a "good adult" lingers — and Maxmovie, which called it "a kindly greeting to everyone who goes to work again today," while conceding that an audience expecting dramatic payoff "may find it a little bland."

So: two stars from the first review on 4 September, seven out of ten from the second, 5.5 from Cine21, and the same sentence in different words from everyone. Good actors, familiar story. For a film selling itself on warmth in a holiday week, that is not fatal. It is also not what a distributor wants to read two days out.

Nancy Meyers sent a note

The original's writer-director did not give an interview; she sent a written message, relayed by Warner Bros Korea on 3 September. The wording in the Korean press varies enough that we are using the earliest version:

"한국영화계를 대표하는 최민식 배우의 캐스팅 소식에 정말 기뻤다. 로버트 드 니로와는 또 다른 깊이와 품격, 유쾌함을 보여줄 것 같아 기대가 크다."

"I was truly glad at the casting of Choi Min-sik, who represents Korean cinema. I expect he will show a depth, dignity and playfulness different from Robert De Niro's."

On Han So-hee: that she would "charmingly portray a confident, energetic modern leader," and that she was "already curious about the chemistry the two actors will show."

The English original has not been published, so those are translations of a Korean rendering of an English message. Treat them accordingly.

The script that was orphaned in 2020

Here is the part of this film's history that its marketing does not lead with.

The Korean remake was written and ready by around 2019, with 강윤성 attached to direct and Choi Min-sik already cast. Then, in September 2020, Warner Bros pulled out of Korean film production and distribution altogether. The remake stalled. Its script sat for four years.

Warner's last Korean film as distributor was 《조제》, in December 2020. Its last Korean production, 《죽여주는 로맨스》, was left stranded by the exit and eventually came out under another distributor with another title in 2023.

The remake was revived in June 2024 — by 앤솔로지스튜디오, whose head had been a Warner Bros Korea vice-president and reopened the conversation with Burbank — and now arrives with Warner Bros Korea as co-producer and distributor. It is the first Korean film Warner has released here since 《조제》, five years and nine months ago.

Which reframes the opening. This is not just a remake going up against a Nolan film. It is a studio testing whether it should be in Korea at all, with a project it abandoned once already.

The bet extends past the domestic run: on 16 October the film goes out across nine Asian territories — Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia — which Warner Bros Korea describes as the largest Asian rollout of any Korean film it has handled.

The numbers that don't exist yet, and one that does

Nobody has published a budget or a break-even for this film. We searched, in Korean, for the usual terms and found only the 2015 original's figures. So the first weekend cannot be scored against a target, because there isn't one on the record.

What KOBIS does already show is 21,379 admissions before the film has opened — the paid preview screenings around the 12 September stage greetings. That is a small number, but it is also the first real audience, and it is why the reviews you will see on Naver from tomorrow are not all from critics.

The stage-greeting run is heavy: Seoul on the 12th and the 16th, Busan on the 19th across six cinemas including 영화의전당, Daegu on the 20th, and back to Seoul for the Chuseok weekend of 25–27 September. Whatever the numbers do, the cast will be standing in front of them.

First-weekend admissions post on KOBIS on Monday 21 September. We will update this piece then.

For the director, and why she is introduced as two different people depending on the language you read, see our earlier piece. For what happens on the 23rd, the three-film collision.

Images. The photograph of Han So-hee is from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, by Desmond Herzfelder for WikiPortraits, CC BY 4.0, taken a year before this film's release — a genuine camera photograph with full EXIF, which is rarer on Wikimedia Commons than it should be for a working actor. We looked at sixteen other files of her: all but two are frame-grabs from YouTube videos, legally on Commons under the platform's Creative Commons option but with no camera behind them, and one was upscaled with AI, which we would not use. Choi Min-sik's most recent freely licensed photograph is from Karlovy Vary in 2009, and we decided seventeen years was too long a gap for a piece about this week. Distributor stills carry a Warner Bros Korea credit on every outlet that runs them, and no readable terms — publication is not permission. The other two images are ours: the booking board as it stood on Sunday afternoon, and the Cine21 line, set as type.

Sources. Bookings are from KOBIS's real-time reservation board, read directly at 16:44 on 14 September, with the Saturday and 9 September snapshots from 뉴스1 and 이데일리 respectively; the cumulative for 《오디세이》 and its all-time rank are from KOBIS's daily and historical tables as of 13 September. Reviews are quoted from 씨네21 (전문가 별점), YTN, 텐아시아, 씨네플레이, 세계일보/뉴스1, 맥스무비, 시선뉴스, 더팩트, 오마이스타 and Yonhap via the Korea Times, all published 4–13 September; each is dated in the text or above. Nancy Meyers's message is from 이데일리, 3 September. Warner's 2020 exit is from 쿠키뉴스 and 아주경제, September 2020; the remake's 2019 script and 2024 revival from 오마이스타, June 2024; runtime, rating and the Asian rollout from 매일신문, 씨네21's database and 디스패치.

Stated rather than smoothed. We say 《조제》 was Warner Korea's last Korean film as distributor, because its last Korean production went out under a different distributor after the exit — the two claims are often conflated. The "first Korean film since" phrasing is the one both facts support. We could not find a budget or break-even in three Korean searches, and say so rather than borrow one. Nancy Meyers's words are a translation of a Korean rendering of an unpublished English statement, and one outlet rewrote them in stronger terms than the original report; we used the earliest. And 《인턴》's pre-opening admissions figure is on KOBIS but we could not confirm exactly which screenings generated it, so we have described the mechanism as the likeliest rather than the certain one.