Shelved K-movie The Match with Lee Byung Hun and Yoo Ah In is an Unexpected Success Sitting at #3 in the 2025 Box Office to Date
China isn’t the only country releasing on-the-shelf projects recently, South Korea in late March released the K-movie The Match. It was supposed to be a tentpole and prestige production with two top actors in veteran Lee Byung Hun and a younger generation award winning star Yoo Ah In in an onscreen Go Match showdown between mentor and hot shot. The movie was shelved with Yoo An In was arrested for his drug use in February 2023 and subsequently prosecuted. He was found guilty and sentenced to one year in jail a year later in September of 2024 but in his appeal his sentence was suspended in February 2025 after he served 5 months and was released. With that the production of The Match decided to quickly release the movie and also cut out or minimize Yoo Ah In in the promo materials though he remains in the movie itself since he’s one of the male leads and has significant screen time. The movie has since become a hit with over 2.5M admissions and $14M USD in the box office, currently it’s the 3rd highest grossing movie in 2025 in the K-box office, though 4th if you count Harbin which was released the last week of December 2024 but did most of its tickets sold this year. The reviews are strong and apparently the normally judge-y domestic viewers were fine watching Yoo Ah In onscreen if the movie itself was very good.
It’s a hit because of Yoo Ah In. His worldwide audience is sick of the toxic shaming culture in SK he has been a victim of and they are rallying to support him anyway they can.
Yes, worldwide audience at South Korea box office 🤦 I’m agree about toxic shaming culture, but about the rest read article before commenting at least
Did his worldwide audience all fly to South Korea to watch the movie? Because these are domestic ticket sales. His worldwide audience most likely hasn’t seen the movie at all because it’s not in the Top 10 Movies in Netflix outside of Korea.
It’s another reminder for me general audience in South Korea has nothing to do with whoever their media canceling.
I saw it a lot of times with other korean celebrities who were warmly greeted by audience no matter what journalists wrote about them. At least after dr*g scandals. Don’t know about future of Yoo Ah In’s career as this is depends not only on general public but also on producers and higher-ups, but I think audience will be okay with him (as they’re okay with many other celebrities with such scandals), and this movie example of it.
The box office performance if his next movie (High Five) will be more indicative of how the public accepts him because his co-stars there are not proven box office stars on their own. He is the biggest name in the cast instead of a co-lead like in The Match with Lee Byung Hun.
Yay!
Seriously, is there anyone (here) who doesn’t support the release of this movie, either in the past or now? Why(not)?