Right before the release of Glooming Day, the public either ridiculed the movie or were generally indifferent. The only people who felt sorry for the cast or even looked forward to the release of the movie were the fans of the main leads and movie aficionados who loved Director Choi Yi-Geon’s work. 

Even though they did everything they could and used every means and tool possible to promote the movie, it did not do much. The prejudice that all G&C romance films were bad had been very deeply ingrained in the public’s minds. It was to the point that there was even a joke circulating about how Glooming Day would be considered successful if it had a tenth of Woo-Jin’s “Confession” video’s viewers.  

The constant ridicule and negative reactions to a movie that had not been released or seen yet spread like wildfire. Nobody had any expectations for this movie. The trailer of the movie was very beautiful and touching, but like it was for all such movies, everyone expected the trailer to be all there was to it.  

When the first press screening turned out to be better than expected, many people said it was because of G&C’s aggressive support. G&C’s unusually excessive amount of promotion had actually created an adverse effect. The public thought of it cynically as they said that G&C had bought the media with huge amounts of capital.  The public said that’s how it had been for the previous films,...