Every single movie produced by Koreans and released on 2023 has failed.
Not one survived.
Someone might say "Ma Dongseok's Roundup: No way out is a hit"
Ma Dongseok, legal name Don Lee, is a US Citizen and Roundup was produced by Lee himself, making it an American movie set in Korea. Roundup No Way Out is an American movie.
Quite a few movies are not released since they are not expected to break even.
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The reason Korean movies failed are several , higher ticket prices, cliche ridden stories and poorly thought out productions.
And, OTT is hot in Korea - after Squid Game, a lot of actors who are kind of famous mostly moved on to OTTs. TV became not too cool, and movies no less so.
The risk is borne by the producers of the OTT series , and unlike movies, OTTs are filmed with a more relaxed schedule. More famous actors can expect to claim a share of OTT's profits, and naturally since OTTs don't have distribution costs, their profits would be higher and more famous actors do sign a contract to lock their take in.
Even Song Gangho, who won the Best Actor in Cannes and probably one of the very few actors who never acted in a TV series, is moving on to OTT as projects in Korea have dried up (again, Roundup is an American project).
I personally think Korean movies won't rise again, replaced completely by OTTs, since the game has changed. Japanese movie industry transformed into animations and real versions of animations, and Korean movie industry will simply be absolved into OTTs (again Roundup is an American movie).
