'Toy Story 5' Holds South Korea's Box Office Crown as 'The Eyes' Takes Silver

Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5 held firm at the top of the South Korean box office over the Jun. 26–28 weekend, according to tracking service KOBIS, the data arm of the Korean Film Council. The studio's flagship family animation kept the No. 1 slot it has occupied in the market for a second consecutive frame, even as a locally produced thriller opened aggressively in second place.

The picture emerging from the weekend is the one South Korean distributors have grown used to in 2026: American studio tentpoles still anchor the top of the chart, but Korean genre films are doing the heavy lifting on the rest of the leaderboard — and increasingly, on opening-weekend revenue per screen.

A second weekend on top

Per KOBIS data cited by Variety, Toy Story 5 led the market for the Jun. 26–28 frame, a week after it opened No. 1. The film continues to do what the Toy Story brand has done in Korea for nearly three decades — draw four-quadrant family audiences during a window when local schools are out and multiplexes count on matinee traffic. The sequel franchise's longevity in the market is unusual: most Western animated originals front-load heavily and fade by week three; the toys keep selling popcorn well into the back half of a release.

That stickiness is partly structural. Korea's exhibition sector is concentrated in Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi region, where family-oriented CGV and Lotte Cinema megaplexes programme Toy Story features across premium-format screens — IMAX, 4DX, ScreenX — that justify higher ticket averages. Variety's reporting credits the multi-format footprint with sustaining the sequel's second-weekend gross even as overall industry-wide attendance normalised after the opening frame.

A domestic challenger takes second

The Eyes, a Korean-language thriller, opened at No. 2 in its first frame — the strongest debut by a local title on this weekend's chart. According to Variety's weekend report, the film landed behind Toy Story 5 but ahead of the rest of the field, an unusually clean sophomore-weekend hold for the family animation and a strong opening for the new release.

The split is familiar to anyone who tracks the Korean market. Korean thrillers, melodramas and historical pieces tend to over-index in their opening weekends — strong word-of-mouth, dense local marketing, bankable mid-tier stars — then drop quickly once curiosity is satisfied. Hollywood franchise animation does the opposite: a quieter first weekend that compounds as parents and repeat-viewing families push the multiple. When both behaviours run on the same chart, the imported title wins the frame and the local title wins the per-screen average. That is broadly what the Jun. 26–28 chart shows.

What the chart doesn't tell you

Two caveats worth flagging. First, KOBIS's daily figures are gross receipts, not admissions; ticket prices in Korea have crept upward in 2026 as exhibitors have leaned further into premium formats, which means a flat-looking weekend in won terms can mask falling attendance. Second, Variety's report does not break out per-screen averages or Seoul-versus-national splits, both of which would clarify whether The Eyes's second-place finish represents genuine reach or a compressed release on a small footprint. The sources do not specify either metric for this frame.

The broader pattern is consistent with the year-to-date shape of the Korean market. Family animation from U.S. majors has dominated the upper-middle of the chart, while Korean genre titles have rotated through the remaining slots with greater volatility than in 2024 or 2025. Neither development is novel, but the gap between the two — a single American title at the top, a churn of Korean releases behind it — is the widest it has been in some years.

What to watch next

Three things to monitor over the next two weekends. First, Toy Story 5's third-weekend trajectory, which will indicate whether the sequel can replicate the long-tail holds that earlier Toy Story features posted in Korea. Second, The Eyes's second-weekend drop-off, which will tell distributors whether the opening was a curiosity hit or the start of a multi-weekend story. Third, the slate of late-June and early-July local releases: Korean distributors traditionally programme counter-programming around the summer school holiday, and the next fortnight will test whether the imported-vs-local split holds or compresses.

For now, the chart says what it has said for most of 2026: a Pixar sequel at the top, a Korean thriller pushing up behind it, and a long tail of mid-budget releases trading places in the lower slots. That is not a disruption. It is the routine shape of a mature, bifurcated market — and it is worth marking only because the routine is itself the story.

This publication framed the weekend as a hold-pattern rather than a surprise: Variety's reporting supports the read that the chart's structure is the data point, not any single film's performance.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Film_Council