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‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Repeats at No. 1 on the Box Office Charts

16 March 2024, Australia, Sydney: Movie character "PO" poses at the Australian Premiere of "Kung Fu Panda 4" at Event Cinemas Bondi Junction on in Sydney. (dpa)
16 March 2024, Australia, Sydney: Movie character "PO" poses at the Australian Premiere of "Kung Fu Panda 4" at Event Cinemas Bondi Junction on in Sydney. (dpa)
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‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Repeats at No. 1 on the Box Office Charts

16 March 2024, Australia, Sydney: Movie character "PO" poses at the Australian Premiere of "Kung Fu Panda 4" at Event Cinemas Bondi Junction on in Sydney. (dpa)
16 March 2024, Australia, Sydney: Movie character "PO" poses at the Australian Premiere of "Kung Fu Panda 4" at Event Cinemas Bondi Junction on in Sydney. (dpa)

“Kung Fu Panda 4” stayed at the top of the North American box office in its second weekend in theaters. The Universal and DreamWorks Animation movie earned $30 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The franchise featuring the voice of Jack Black is responsible for over $1.9 billion at the box office since it launched in 2008 and spawned several animated series, shorts, video games and a holiday special. The fourth installment, playing in 4,067 locations in North America, has already made $107.7 million domestically.

There were several new movies arriving in over 1,000 theaters (or expanding) this weekend, including Lionsgate’s Mark Wahlberg dog movie “Arthur the King,” Focus Features’ comedic satire “The American Society of Magical Negroes” and A24’s Kristen Stewart-led bodybuilding thriller “Love Lies Bleeding.”

But the charts still belonged to the franchises, including “Dune: Part Two,” which came in a very close second in its third weekend, with $29.1 million. That's down only 37% from last weekend. It’s now made $205.3 million domestically. The first film, which was released simultaneously in theaters and on streaming, capped out at around $435 million globally, while “Part Two” is already at almost $500 million worldwide.

“Arthur the King” did the best of the newcomers, landing in third place with $7.5 million from 3,003 locations. The studio went into the weekend expecting something in the $8 million to $10 million range. Its low production cost and international presales should yield profits.

Directed by Simon Cellan Jones and written by Michael Brandt, the movie is based on the true story of an adventure racer who befriends a stray dog on a perilous 435-mile trek in the Dominican Republic. Simu Liu plays one of Wahlberg’s teammates. With an A CinemaScore, the studio is hoping positive word of mouth will boost sales in the coming weeks.

“Love Lies Bleeding” opened in 1,362 locations to $2.5 million. Written and directed by Rose Glass (“Saint Maud”), it’s a pulpy ’80s-set Western thriller about an isolated gym manager (Stewart) and a bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) passing through town.

“The American Society of Magical Negroes” opened in 1,147 theaters and made an estimated $1.3 million. According to exit data, 52% of the opening weekend audience was Black. The movie, written and directed by Kobi Libii, is a satire about a secret society of Black people dedicated to making white lives easier. Justice Smith and David Alan Grier star.

In the first weekend following the Oscars, “Poor Things” added $2.3 million globally, bumping its total to $112.6 million.

Next weekend, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” will arrive in theaters, armed with proton packs and brand name recognition.

“When there’s not a newcomer dominating the marketplace, it makes for a rather slow weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “Now we’re just waiting for ‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ and ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.’ That combo should take us out of the month of March on a high note.”

He added: “We’re going to have to have a lot of patience until we get to May and ‘The Fall Guy’ and the summer movie season. But there’s some great movies on the way.”

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The Real-Life Violence That Inspired South Korea’s ‘Squid Game'

Riot police march in front of the main building of Ssangyong Motor in Pyeongtaek, 70km south of Seoul, on August 6, 2009. (AFP)
Riot police march in front of the main building of Ssangyong Motor in Pyeongtaek, 70km south of Seoul, on August 6, 2009. (AFP)
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The Real-Life Violence That Inspired South Korea’s ‘Squid Game'

Riot police march in front of the main building of Ssangyong Motor in Pyeongtaek, 70km south of Seoul, on August 6, 2009. (AFP)
Riot police march in front of the main building of Ssangyong Motor in Pyeongtaek, 70km south of Seoul, on August 6, 2009. (AFP)

A factory turned into a battlefield, riot police armed with tasers and an activist who spent 100 days atop a chimney -- the unrest that inspired Netflix's most successful show ever has all the hallmarks of a TV drama.

This month sees the release of the second season of "Squid Game", a dystopian vision of South Korea where desperate people compete in deadly versions of traditional children's games for a massive cash prize.

But while the show itself is a work of fiction, Hwang Dong-hyuk, its director and writer, has said the experiences of the main character Gi-hun, a laid-off worker, were inspired by the violent Ssangyong strikes in 2009.

"I wanted to show that any ordinary middle-class person in the world we live in today can fall to the bottom of the economic ladder overnight," he has said.

In May 2009, Ssangyong, a struggling car giant taken over by a consortium of banks and private investors, announced it was laying off more than 2,600 people, or nearly 40 percent of its workforce.

That was the beginning of an occupation of the factory and a 77-day strike that ended in clashes between strikers armed with slingshots and steel pipes and riot police wielding rubber bullets and tasers.

Many union members were severely beaten and some were jailed.

- 'Many lost their lives' -

The conflict did not end there.

Five years later, union leader Lee Chang-kun held a sit-in for 100 days on top of one of the factory's chimneys to protest a sentence in favor of Ssangyong against the strikers.

He was supplied with food from a basket attached to a rope by supporters and endured hallucinations of a tent rope transformed into a writhing snake.

Some who experienced the unrest struggled to discuss "Squid Game" because of the trauma they endured, Lee told AFP.

The repercussions of the strike, compounded by protracted legal battles, caused significant financial and mental strain for workers and their families, resulting in around 30 deaths by suicide and stress-related issues, Lee said.

"Many have lost their lives. People had to suffer for too long," he said.

He vividly remembers the police helicopters circling overhead, creating intense winds that ripped away workers' raincoats.

Lee said he felt he could not give up.

"We were seen as incompetent breadwinners and outdated labor activists who had lost their minds," he said.

"Police kept beating us even after we fell unconscious -- this happened at our workplace, and it was broadcast for so many to see."

Lee said he had been moved by scenes in the first season of "Squid Game" where Gi-hun struggles not to betray his fellow competitors.

But he wished the show had spurred real-life change for workers in a country marked by economic inequality, tense industrial relations and deeply polarized politics.

"Despite being widely discussed and consumed, it is disappointing that we have not channeled these conversations into more beneficial outcomes," he said.

- 'Shadow of state violence' -

The success of "Squid Game" in 2021 left him feeling "empty and frustrated".

"At the time, it felt like the story of the Ssangyong workers had been reduced to a commodity in the series," Lee told AFP.

"Squid Game", the streaming platform's most-watched series of all time, is seen as embodying the country's rise to a global cultural powerhouse, part of the "Korean wave" alongside the Oscar-winning "Parasite" and K-pop stars such as BTS.

But its second season comes as the Asian democracy finds itself embroiled in some of its worst political turmoil in decades, triggered by conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol's failed bid to impose martial law this month.

Yoon has since been impeached and suspended from duties pending a ruling by the Constitutional Court.

That declaration of martial law risked sending the Korean wave "into the abyss", around 3,000 people in the film industry, including "Parasite" director Bong Joon-ho, said in a letter following Yoon's shocking decision.

Vladimir Tikhonov, a Korean studies professor at the University of Oslo, told AFP that some of South Korea's most successful cultural products highlight state and capitalist violence.

"It is a noteworthy and interesting phenomenon -- we still live in the shadow of state violence, and this state violence is a recurrent theme in highly successful cultural products."