'The Roundup' off to record-setting start at box office

SEOUL, May 19 (Yonhap) -- The action comedy "The Roundup" has set the best opening-day record among Korean films released during the COVID-19 pandemic, box-office data showed Thursday.

The sequel to the 2017 hit comedy "The Outlaws" garnered about 467,000 viewers upon its debut Wednesday, accounting for 89 percent of the tickets sold on the day, according to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

It marked the largest first-day score for a homegrown film since the new coronavirus broke out in early 2020, outnumbering the previous record of 354,000 set by the zombie apocalypse thriller "Peninsula" in July 2020.

But it lags behind "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" (2022) with an opening-day score of 715,000 last month and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" (2021) with 635,000 in December.

"The Roundup" tells the story of Detective Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok) heading to Vietnam to extradite a suspect only to find out about additional murder cases involving an unknown killer who has committed crimes against tourists for many years.

brk@yna.co.kr
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