영화전문 주간지 '무비위크'가 창간 12년 만에 폐간된다.

무비위크는 12일 공식 트위터를 통해 오는 22일 571호 발행을 끝으로 발행을 종 료한다고 밝혔다.

이 잡지는 2001년 창간해 '씨네21'과 함께 국내 영화 전문지의 명맥을 이어왔다.

무비위크의 폐간에 따라 영화 주간지는 '씨네21'이 유일하게 남게 됐다.

'씨네21'과 '무비위크' 외에도 1990년대부터 2000년대까지 '키노' '프리미어' '

필름 2.0' 등 여러 영화 전문지가 나왔지만, 무가지 출현을 비롯한 매체 환경의 변화로 잇따라 폐간됐다.

무비위크 측은 "사업부 개편에 따라 '무비위크' 제작진은 4월부터 중앙일보가 발행하는 영화잡지 '매거진 M'으로 통합, 새로운 업무를 시작할 예정"이라고 전했다.

무비위크는 2007년 중앙일보 계열로 편입됐다.

<관련 한글 기사>

Local film weekly ‘Movieweek’ goes out of business

By Claire Lee

Local film weekly Movieweek is going out of business this month, leaving Cine21 as the last Korean movie weekly standing in the country.

The weekly announced the news through their official Twitter account on March 12.

“Our upcoming 571st edition, which will be out on March 22, will be our last issue,” the weekly said via Twitter.

The film magazine was founded in 2001, and has been considered one of the two most influential movie weeklies for the last 12 years, along with Cine21.

From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, a number of movie weeklies were founded. Movieweek was one of them, along with Film 2.0 and Premiere.

In 2008, Premiere and Film 2.0 discontinued their publication, leaving Movieweek and Cine21 as the last local film weeklies.

One of the major reasons behind their disappearance was the emergence of free entertainment papers and magazines in the late 2000s.

Movieweek in fact is turning into a free entertainment magazine “magazine M” next month -- a publication jointly founded by major local daily Joongang Ilbo and its subsidiary Megabox -- a large chain of movie theaters here.

Movieweek was incorporated into Joongang Entertainment and Sports Publishing Inc., another subsidiary of Joongang Ilbo, in 2007. 

“We are not sure how magazine M will be different from Movieweek in terms of the content,” Movieweek writer Baek Jong-hyeon told The Korea Herald. “We’ll have to wait till next month to find that out.”

A number of popular figures in the film industry have expressed their regret over the news, including film director-producer Kim Jho Gwang-soo, actress Kim Hye-na, and screenwriter Kim Do-hoon.

Among them, film producer Shim Jae-myung, whose works include last year’s hit “Architecture 101” and Park Chan-wook’s 2000 drama “Joint Security Area,” said she is “saddened” by the news.

“This shows the dark sides of today’s local film industry where the market share of homegrown films are rising to nearly 80 percent,” she said via her Twitter account on March 13.

“The role of film criticism is being ignored and film journals are losing their ground. This is the era that only praises films with box office hits.”(dyc@heraldcorp.com)