According to the Korean Film Council, the latest The Roundup film The Roundup: Punishment has grabbed more than 4 million moviegoers as of mid-afternoon on April 28th, merely five days after the film’s release.
The Roundup: Punishment achieved the remarkable milestone by gathering 1 million viewers within its first two days, 3 million within four days, and 4 million within five days.
It has also consistently surpassed other Roundup films’ records since its release, becoming the fastest film in 2024 to hit these benchmarks.
Notably, The Roundup: Punishment has also now outpaced Exhuma, which took nine days to reach the same 4 million viewers.
Punishment performs even better than previous Roundup films
This latest entry in the franchise also surpassed the viewer count milestones of its predecessors.
It reached 4 million viewers in the same timeframe as The Roundup: No Way Home (2023), and faster than The Roundup (2022), which took seven days.
However, if you look at the total number of admissions The Roundup: No Way Home earned overall — that film’s final numbers stopped at 10,682,813, short of the 11,838,339 earned by Exhuma.
That may suggest then that The Roundup: Punishment could end up stopping its fast ascent around the same point, leaving it around 1 million admissions short of surpassing 2024’s most successful film yet — Exhuma.
We’ll see how it plays out.
The plot of The Roundup: Punishment
This fourth installment in Ma Dong Seok’s popular The Roundup franchise follows the exploits of renowned detective Ma Seok Do (played by Ma Dong Seok) as he joins forces with the Cyber Investigation Team (CBI) to dismantle an illegal online gambling syndicate.
This necessities Seok Do and the gang heading to Busan to track down members of a money laundering operation.
Meanwhile, in celebration of The Roundup: Punishment passing the 4 million moviegoers mark this weekend, stars Ma Dong Seok, Kim Moo Yeol, Park Ji Hwan, Lee Dong Hwi, Lee Ji Hoon, Lee Joo Bin and others, along with the movie’s director Heo Myung Haeng, were at a movie theater in Seoul thanking fans for heading to theaters to watch their latest film.
The actors and director even commemorated the achievement by taking several fun photos looking ecstatically happy at the film’s success (see above).
By the way, for those of us in the west, it has been confirmed The Roundup: Punishment will be releasing in the United States on May 3rd, with Europeans seeing the film in their movie theaters around the same time.