Musical films that delight both the eyes and ears of the audience have taken over the global box office, including in Korea and North America. The main characters are Disney‘s musical animation ‘Moana 2’ and the screen adaptation of the Broadway musical ‘Wicked’. The two films are also drawing attention and satisfying fans through their collaborations with top Korean artists.

○Two-way domination of the global box office

According to the Integrated Computer Network for Movie Tickets on the 3rd, ‘Moana 2’ and ‘Wicked’, which were released on the 27th and 20th of last month respectively, are taking 1st and 2nd place at the box office, dividing the box office. ‘Moana 2’ has a cumulative audience of 1.43 million, surpassing 1 million on the 1st, the 5th day since its release. This is 5 days before the previous film was released in 2016, and 6 days before Pixar animation ‘Elemental’, which caused a craze by attracting 7.24 million viewers last year, achieved the 1 million mark.

‘Moana 2’ is setting ‘all-time box office records’ in North America and around the world. During the Thanksgiving season, which is considered one of the biggest holidays in North America, it recorded $386.3 million in worldwide box office revenue, surpassing ‘Super Mario Bros.’‘Frozen 2’ and setting a new record for the highest global opening for an animated film.

‘Wicked’, which attracted over 1.2 million viewers in Korea, is also very popular globally. In North America, it has set a new record for the highest-grossing original Broadway musical in 46 years, surpassing records such as ‘Grease’ ‘Les Miserables’. It is also poised to rewrite the history of musical film box office with a similar trend to ‘Frozen’ (2013) and ‘Aladdin’ (2019).

○Collaboration with K-pop and K-musical stars

The two films are collaborating with top domestic artists who are at the forefront of K-pop and musicals, drawing even more attention from domestic audiences.

‘Moana 2’ collaborated with girl group Twice’s Nayeon, and released the pop version of ‘Beyond’, the main theme song of ‘Moana 2’, sung by Nayeon, and a special music video. The music video garnered 1.37 million views in just 12 days since its release.

‘Beyond The Sun’ is a song about Moana‘s fear and conflict as she tries to leave her beloved family behind and embark on a new adventure. Nayeon is receiving favorable reviews for her sincere voice in delivering the song’s message.

The Korean dubbed version of ‘Wicked’ has featured a cast of top Korean musical actors. Park Hye-na and Jung Sun-ah, who have already performed on the ‘Wicked’ musical stage multiple times and hold the record for being the ‘actresses with the most Elphaba and Glinda performances in Korea’, have taken on the voices of the Green Witch Elphaba and the Good Witch Glinda, respectively. Ko Eun-sung, Nam Kyung-joo, and Jung Young-joo have also joined the cast. They also attended a singing event where they performed the representative OST live as a stage greeting.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com