‘The King Of Kings’ Squashes ‘Parasite’ To Become Top-Grossing Korean Film In U.S. History

The Charles Dickens-inspired Christian animated pic The King of Kings has bested Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite to become the highest-grossing South Korean film ever released in North America.

The Angel Studios release racked up an estimated $4 million this past weekend in North America, lifting its three-week total to $54.5 million. Parasite ended its domestic run around $53.8 million in 2019.

While distributor Angel Studios is a Provo, Utah company, they only acquired the movie last November after it had already been completed. King of Kings is a South Korean production, marking the feature animation directorial debut of Seong-ho ‘Jay’ Jang, a veteran vfx supervisor. The lead animation studio is Seoul’s Mofac Animation.

“I could’ve gotten U.S. money easily, but I would’ve lost control over the vision and ownership of the work,” Jang told the Korea Herald. “That was a dealbreaker for me. … We hit rock bottom more than once. We had to redo entire sections from scratch, which burned through cash we didn’t have.”

The success of King of Kings comes as the major studio distributors — Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony, Paramount — seem to have largely forgotten about the existence of animation. Through the first third of this year, the five majors have released a combined total of one theatrical animated feature in the U.S., and in May, the start of the summer blockbuster season, they will not release a single film. It’s a bizarre lull that is representative of how poorly the majors regard animation and how poorly they have planned their slates, especially at a time when animation is booming in popularity all over the globe. And the most disturbing statistic: Through the first half of 2025, the majors are releasing more “live-action” remakes of animated features (3) than actual animated features (2).

The silver lining is that it has opened a door for indies like The King of Kings to thrive, and with Asian animation currently on the rise, U.S. studios may come to regret this era in which they’ve squandered their long-held advantage in feature animation for no discernably good reason.

King of Kings will be released in its native Korea in July.