Monday August 30, 2021
By Puah Ziwei
It has outpaced the popular Marvel film ‘Black Widow’
Escape From Mogadishu. Credit: Lotte Entertainment
Escape From Mogadishu, the new film from director Ryoo Seung-wan, has become the most-watched South Korean film of 2021 so far.
According to its distributor Lotte Entertainment, the movie has sold over 3million tickets in the East Asian country as of August 29, per Korea Times. That figure means the film has officially outpaced Marvel’s Black Widow, the previous most-watched movie of the year in the country.
In addition, Mogadishu is also the most-watched domestic release in almost a year, since last August’s Deliver Us From Evil. According to Newsen, the success of Mogadishu could be a signal that the South Korean film and theatre industry is slowly recovering from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Escape From Mogadishu was first released on July 28. Based on a true story, the movie stars Kim Yoon-seok and Heo Joon-ho as South and North Korean ambassadors trying to flee Somalia during the East African country’s 1991 civil war.
In a previous interview, director Ryoo spoke about how Escape From Mogadishu was shaped by the lessons he took from his oft-criticised 2017 period action film, The Battleship Island.
Much like Ryoo’s 2017 work, Mogadishu is also a historical retelling, but this time around, the director said he took a different approach. “I’ve learned that I could fall into the trap of a spectacle when facing a far more intriguing story like Mogadishu,” he said.