Yeon Sang-ho’s thriller is doing strong business abroad, where theaters have started to open.
While the global box office may be at a standstill right now, one movie that brought a dose of hope to theaters in South Korea last weekend was Yeon Sang-ho’s “Peninsula”. The sequel to the 2016 favorite cult “Train to Busan,” the post-apocalyptic thriller earned $ 13 million at the South Korean box office, according to Deadline figures. In Taiwan, a reported figure of at least $ 5 million was obtained for “Peninsula”, with receipts in Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. “Peninsula” also gave IMAX a victory this weekend, totaling $ 1 million for the first time since mid-March, which was the last time many viewers went to the movies. $ 750,000 of the total IMAX comes from “Peninsula”. In the United States, “Peninsula” is scheduled to open from Well GO USA on August 7.
The original “Train to Busan” grossed $ 92 million at the worldwide box office in 2016, but it’s still alive on Netflix. The horror action movie depicted a “Snowpiercer” train ride through a zombie apocalypse. Set four years after the events of “Train to Busan”, “Peninsula” stars Gang Dong-won as a soldier who managed to get out of zombie-infested South Korea, where the government completely collapsed and turned the country into a poor neighborhood. When he is sent back to Korea to retrieve something valuable, his return is, of course, complicated by both infected and uninfected people.
While “Train to Busan” had a Cannes premiere, that was not possible for “Peninsula,” which made its world debut this weekend. Yeon has cited influences such as “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Land of the Dead,” and “Thunderdome” for the sequel. This time, Yeon is also working on a larger canvas, emboldened by the success of the original. “The scale of ‘Peninsula’ cannot be compared to ‘Train to Busan’, it makes it look like an independent film,” Yeon told Screen.
In “Train to Busan”, “The Age of Shadows” star Gong Yoo plays Seok-woo, a workaholic who is distracted by his work in finance and away from his daughter and wife, who lives in Busan . For her birthday, Seok-Woo agrees to take her with her mother to Busan by train from Seoul. But what was meant to be a simple father-daughter journey becomes the journey from hell, as a virus of unknown origin spreads rapidly on the train, transforming victims into zombies quickly and horribly.
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