South Korea’s foreign-language Oscars contender, “The Throne” had one of the best opening scores this year for a local film, Variety reports.

Opening on 1,210 screens on Wednesday, September 16 through Showbox, it earned $12.3 million from 1.81 million admissions over its opening five days, and accounted for half the weekend box office.

The results by far director Lee Joon-ik’s best opening score. His 2005 period drama “King and the Clown” had a slower start, but made $56.3 million from 12.3 million admissions and is one of the highest grossing Korean films of all time.

Sci-fi sequel “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials” opened in second place, earning $7.31 million from 1.08 million admissions between Wednesday and Sunday. It is a stride ahead of the first “The Maze Runner” which had a four day opening of $4.82 million and totalled $18.3 million.

Third-placed, “Ant-Man” made $1.17 million from 171,000 admissions between Friday and Sunday, a decline of 76%. It has made $19.1 million after three weekends.

Hit action comedy “Veteran” extended its total to $85.4 million from 12.8 million admissions, to become the top Korean film of the year and the sixth biggest of all time. Choi Dong-hoon’s period action drama “Assassination,” has earned $83.8 million from 12.7 million admissions since Jul. 22.

Opening on Thursday, Japanese animated feature “Doraemon The Movie: Nobita and the Space Heroes” was fifth. It earned $306,000 from 50,000 admissions over its opening four days.

Korean thriller, “Deep Trap” dropped to tenth place in its second weekend. It earned $67,200 between Friday and Sunday, with a major week-on-week drop of 94%.