Controversy over abnormal release of 'Despicable Me 4'

The Korean Film Council (KOFIC) has issued a warning against the movie Despicable Me 4, which has become controversial for 'releasing in an abnormal way' by holding large-scale paid premieres before its official release. "We express our strong regret for the abnormal release of the movie, which has harmed the fair order of the movie screening market," said KOFIC’s special committee to promote a fair environment.

According to KOFIC, ‘Despicable Me 4’ was screened in movie theaters for a total of 5,090 times in the name of paid previews on the weekend of July 20 and 21, the weekend before its official release, taking up 768,009 seats in advance. During this period, the number of paid preview screenings of Despicable Me 4 accounted for 12.1 percent of all theaters in Korea. However, the average seat sales rate was only 13.5 percent (103,528 moviegoers). "The abnormal release resulted in 664,481 empty seats, depriving 147 movies on July 20 and 144 movies on July 21 of screening opportunities and seats, thus disrupting the fair market order," KOFIC noted.

"Last year, the government, KOFIC, and the screening investment and distribution industry formed the 'consultative working group on Korean film re-emergence policy' and the ‘consultative council on Korean film industry crisis recovery policy' to help overcome the post-pandemic (Korean) film industry crisis," KOFIC said. "The anomalous release of the film in the name of a paid premiere threw cold water on the joint efforts of the Korean government and the film industry."


Min Kim kimmin@donga.com