The Oscar-winning dark comedy Parasite has been retaining its box office crown in Japan as well as in Korea and other importing countries.
According to the film’s Japanese distributor Bitters End and various news agencies such as Reuters, Parasite attracted more than 2.2 million viewers to the theatres for the last 44 days, from January 10 (the release date in Japan) through February 22. Its ticket sales figures also surpassed 3 billion Yens (around 32.5 billion Wons) during the same period. Parasite has hereby topped the Japanese box office of all-time Korean films released locally, dragging down the former No. 1 hit A Moment to remember (2004) to the second in a whopping 15 years.
Meanwhile on February 23, director Bong Joon Ho and Parasite’s lead actor Song Kang Ho attended a press conference held at the Reporters’ Club in Tokyo, Japan. It’s the first time for them to visit Japan after winning four awards including the Best Picture one at the 92nd Academy Awards. Bong and Song appreciated the local media and movie fans for praising their own work while making a wish that Korean and Japanese film industries would carry out cultural exchanges with each other as frequent as in early 2000s.
