Can the theater’s schedule be revived by law?
The early‑2026 debate surrounding “Hold‑Back”
Before the shock of the first year without a single ten-million-attendance film had even subsided, Korean cinema entered the new year divided over a single bill: the proposed “holdback” legislation, which would legally mandate theaters’ exclusive screening period. Is this bill a remedy for the industry’s crisis—or a misdirected arrow?
In January 2026, the Korean film industry confronted a landscape defined by last year’s performance report. Total box-office revenue for 2025 amounted to 1.047 trillion won, a 12.4% decline from the previous year, with attendance totaling just 106.09 million viewers. The decline was even steeper for Korean films: revenue fell by 39.4% to 419.1 billion won, and attendance dropped by 39.0% to 43.58 million viewers. The domestic film market share plunged to the 40% mark.
There was also a symbolic moment: it was the first year since 2012 with not a single “ten-million-viewer” film, and the annual box-office champion was not a Korean film but the Japanese anime *Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie – Mugen Train* (approximately 5.64 million viewers). It marked the first time an animated film—not a live-action foreign film—topped that year’s box-office chart. That is why “survival,” not “recovery,” was the film industry’s defining theme as the new year began.
The sense of crisis converged on one issue: the legislation of “holdback”. Holdback refers to the grace period between a film’s theatrical run and its release on other platforms, such as OTT services. The amendment to the Film and Video Promotion Act, proposed in September 2025, seeks to codify this period in law at a maximum of six months. This period—once ranging from six months to a year—has now shrunk to an average of under four months, with some films moving directly to OTT just one month after theatrical release; the amendment aims to reverse this trend.
The logic is simple and urgent: the shorter the exclusive theatrical window, the more audiences calculate, “I’ll just wait a little and watch it at home,” thereby diminishing the theater’s value. From the perspective of investors and distributors, if theatrical box-office performance collapses, the primary revenue channel for recouping production costs disappears. This is why much of the film industry has embraced the institutionalization of holdback as an “emergency resuscitation measure.”
However, there is also a clearly opposing interpretation of the same policy. Consumer advocacy groups criticized it as “an excessive regulation that restricts consumer choice,” arguing that in today’s environment where OTT consumption has become widespread, narrowing viewing windows for six months exclusively to theaters and IPTV—requiring additional payments—is unjustified. They contend that declining theater attendance stems from a complex mix of factors, including rising ticket prices, competition for leisure time, and the proliferation of OTT platforms—and that mandating a fixed theatrical window alone will not bring audiences back. Critics have also pointed out that this measure could act as a “double constraint” on independent and art-house films, which have long relied on rapid platform transitions to compensate for limited screening opportunities.
What’s noteworthy is that even the filmmakers who feel the crisis most acutely don’t see Holdback as the sole solution. The deeper structural flaw they’re targeting together is the screen monopoly and vertical integration. In a system where a large corporation that owns theater chains also controls production and distribution, a single blockbuster can dominate the screens, leaving no room for diversity. If Holdback is about turning off the faucet at the exit, breaking up the screen monopoly is about reopening the water flow at the entrance. The underlying diagnosis of the January debate was that focusing on just one side is insufficient.
Korean cinema in January 2026 ultimately stood before a single, fundamental question: Can the value of theaters—as a time and space—be revived through law and regulation? The holdback strategy was the most concrete—and yet most contentious—response to that question. On one side lies the desperate effort to prevent the collapse of the theater ecosystem; on the other, the cold, hard reality of a market whose viewing environment has already changed.
What is clear is that a single figure—six months—will not bring back the steps of the 100 million people who have been lost. Extending the grace period, breaking the screen monopoly, and supporting the dwindling film funding must all happen together; otherwise, any solution is only half‑effective. The debate in the first month of the new year didn’t so much provide answers as it sharply asked what Korean cinema is trying to preserve.