The Assassins passes 2 million admissions in 11 days despite rallies at its star's home

Spread evenly, 2,045,495 admissions over 11 days comes to about 186,000 a day ^[1]. The protests are counted in dozens. Police unofficially estimated about 50 people outside the house in Seongbuk District ^[4], and Hoguk Alliance Shield Corps registered 30 participants for its rally outside Hive Media Corp, the production company ^[7]. The two gatherings come to roughly 80 people, counting one by police estimate and the other by registration ^[2]. An average day's audience is more than 2,000 times as large ^[4].

The more useful figure looks forward. The film has led advance ticket sales among Korean releases for 20 consecutive days ^[2], a longer stretch than it has been in cinemas ^[1], so roughly nine days of the streak came before opening ^[3]. Advance sales are tickets bought for showings that have not happened yet. The streak was still intact on the day the campaign reached the actor's front door ^[2][3].

The same numbers fit a few different stories. The controversy could be selling tickets by giving people a reason to judge the film for themselves, and nothing in the reports separates that effect from ordinary demand. The protests could be costing nothing at the ticket window while costing the cast elsewhere. Or the cumulative total could be hiding a run that peaked in its first days and is now falling.

I think the second is closest to the record. Bellado said it would keep visiting Burger King and Kiwoom Securities, where Yoo is an advertising model, to demand that his endorsement contracts be withdrawn ^[5]. It also wants him to appear in what it called "right-wing films" ^[6]. Fifty people outside a house do not move a release averaging 186,000 admissions a day ^[4][1]. At an advertiser's door, the same group is a cost to a company with no stake in the film's account of 1974.

The case against that view is the third story. An 11-day average says nothing about shape, and a heavy opening can hide a steep second-week fall. The reports do not include the film's budget, its break-even point or a day-by-day admissions count. The view is wrong if Korean Film Council daily figures show admissions breaking sharply downward once the rallies began ^[1].

The producers have kept to the line they gave earlier, that the film "is not a film made to newly establish a particular historical conclusion or to deny or distort existing facts" ^[11].