Released on July 22, the movie “Assassination” recorded a total of 9 million admissions as of August 10, 7 AM (Korea Film Council statistics), making it the first Korean movie released in 2015 to step toward the 10 million admission mark. Even before its release, “Assassination” set a record for the highest reservation rate among Korean movies this year. This was followed by the best opening score this year for a Korean movie and the quickest record to reach 1 million admissions in the opening weekend. It is still going strong in its third week, which is often regarded as the crossroads to 10 million admissions.

On August 7, which marked its third week, “Assassination” surpassed the 8 million admission mark. On the third weekend, 400,000 people watched the movie each day. Thanks to the large number of moviegoers on the weekends, the movie breezed by the 8 million admission mark and passed by 9 million admissions on the 10th, the start of its fourth week. Considering that the previous 10-million-admission movies accumulated 8 million moviegoers by its third week, “Assassination” is following the same trend. The reason the third week is important is that this is when the admission number begins to dwindle compared with the previous weeks. However, “Assassination” is still going strong.

The trend now is to re-watch the movie. This is a detail that determines whether the movie reaches the 10 million admission mark or ends at the 8 million admission mark. Words about “Assassination” spread across the audience of all ages and ushered the moviegoers back to the cinema. Of course, the marketing team’s various events and strategies to keep the audience’s interests running high have also helped. The lead actors are still doing rounds at the cinemas, and Jeon Ji-hyun promised to donate packed meals to charity groups if the movie records 5 million admissions. Thanks to all these efforts, “Assassination” has defended its screens from its rivals. The summer cinema is largely dominated by “Assassination,” “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation,” and “Veteran,” and “Assassination” has done well to defend its screens even in its third week. 

One production staff said, “The 10-million-admission countdown has begun. It’s just a matter of time till the movie reaches the 10 million admission mark. It will be the first Korean movie to do so this year, and people are waiting to see how far it will go from there. It will be interesting to see if it can surpass Choi Dong-hoon’s previous movie ‘The Thieves’ as well.”