The release of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” resulted in the largest weekend earnings of the year for the South Korean box office, with a start of $10.3 million. The film was shown on over 1,800 screens and accounted for 46% of the overall market between Friday and Sunday, as reported by Kobis, the Korean Film Council’s tracking service. Despite a challenging year for the theatrical business in Korea, “Guardians” had a two-fold higher opening than “The Super Mario Bros Movie” and a nearly four-fold higher opening than the next biggest title debut of 2023 (which was “The First Slam Dunk” with $2.61 million in the first week of January). In its first five days, “Guardians” earned $13.2 million, ranking it as the seventh highest grossing film of the year at the end of its debut weekend.

Over the Children’s Day holiday weekend, the film was released and gave a boost to the box office. This helped “The Super Mario Bros Movie” achieve a higher score in its second weekend than its initial debut. The film earned $5.44 million over the weekend, bringing its cumulative total to $13.4 million.

Despite facing tough competition, the Japanese anime film “Crayon Shin-Chan: Mononoke Ninja Chimpuden” had a successful debut and landed in third place, earning $2.26 million.

The top-performing Korean-made film was “Dream,” which premiered the weekend prior and earned $1.59 million in its second weekend. After being in theaters for 12 days, it has a total box office gross of $6.99 million.

The Korean box office has been dominated by foreign films this year, with only two out of the top five films being domestic productions. The latest weekend saw the Japanese anime “Suzume” maintain its position as the highest-earning film of the year, while “John Wick: Chapter 4” came in sixth place with $821,000 in earnings. The horror movie “The Ghost Station” was the highest-placed local title of the weekend, earning $330,000 and amassing $1.80 million after nearly three weeks in cinemas.