Koreans Can’t Get Enough Of ‘Elemental’, #1 For Three Straight Weeks

In the United States, Disney-Pixar’s Elemental grossed $10 million last weekend, its fourth weekend, pushing the film over the century mark to $109.6M domestic.

After a slow start, the film is legging out a strong run at the box office and is now guaranteed to skip past Lightyear ($118.3M) and The Good Dinosaur ($123M).

The film is also showing strength internationally, reaching $253.8M global, already surpassing Lightyear’s $226.4M.

Elemental is directed by Korean-American Peter Sohn, and perhaps the most interesting box office story about the film right now is coming out of South Korea, where the film opened in second place, but has now been the no. 1 film in the country for the last three weeks.

Even more impressive, Elemental’s Korea gross this past weekend – $6.1M – was its highest yet. Defying box office norms, the film has grossed a greater amount each weekend it has screened in Korea. Over the weekend, nearly half (48.6%) of all movie tickets sold in Korea were to Elemental.

Its total gross of $25.9M makes Elemental Korea’s fifth-highest-grossing release of the year, behind The Roundup: No Way Out ($79.7M), Suzume ($43.6M), The First Slam Dunk ($37.7M), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($34.1M). As it keeps gaining steam, it will likely end up higher on that list.

Korea isn’t an outlier either. Elemental’s weekend gross actually went up in a number of countries last weekend compared to the prior one. Here’s the countries where it increased its box office, according to Deadline: Uruguay (+127%), New Zealand (+119%), Vietnam (+41%), Chile (+40%), Australia (+32%), Israel (+13%), and Brazil (+3%).

Watch an interview with director Pete Sohn about the development of the film: