Search
Partners
Anime News
|
Advance Ticket Sales High For Taekwon V Date: 1/20/2007 |
|
On January 18th the long anticipated restored film version of the South Korean robot animation classic, Taekwon V opened in theaters nationwide there. Advance ticket sales were considerably high in the days leading up to the release, achieving #1 status in many cases as reported by websites dedicated to logging ticket reservations and box-office revenue outlook. 150 theaters will screen it from the opening. 180,000 people flocked to see it just in seoul in 1976. Debuting in that year, creator / director Cheong-gi Kim's Taekwon V was the first full length animated feature to be released in South Korea. It enjoyed wide commerical success and is seen today as a classic and masterpiece. Original prints of the film were thought to have all but rotted away and vanished. Seven sequels spun off, running through the early 1990's. The work has come to the news forefront in Korea and Japan recently due to a miraculous find a few years ago by the Korean Film Council. What they discovered was an original 35mm reel containing the '76 feature. In September of 2005 the KOFIC announced the completion of a two-year effort to restore the film from various sources, including the newly discovered print. Transferred to digital format and restored by a team of 5000 people, the effort cost a total of one billion won (US$1 million). Employing color correction, reducing grain, erasing the effects of dirt and scratches and providing a new 5.1ch Dolby soundtrack in addition to the restored original soundtrack, the team worked on every one of the film's 108,852 frames, one-by-one. Due to the robot's appearance, criticizms have been made of its resemblence to the Japanese Animation classic mecha anime Mazinger Z. |
| Source: Anime News Network |
