Toronto’s Maggie Kang may be sitting on the hottest movie of the year, which as of Tuesday earned 236 million views — more streams than any other Netflix film ever. And she may have just launched that juggernaut streamer’s first hugely successful theatrical release, with sing-along screenings scheduled for screaming fans around the world.
But that doesn’t mean KPop Demon Hunters was ever a sure thing.
“You don’t really expect this kind of reaction,” Kang told CBC Radio’s Q with Tom Power last week. “I honestly didn’t think it was even possible for a movie to be this popular, really.”
That’s because from studios to streamers to stans, the idea that an animated musical about an ostensibly hyperspecific, non-American music genre would do big numbers was not in the cards.
That’s not to say Kang was ambivalent about the project. After working as a storyboard artist for 20 years, she and co-writer-director Chris Appelhans were passionate enough about their genre-crossing idea to pitch it to friend and producer Aron Warner. As he was then at Sony working on the animated film Wish Dragon, he’d asked her to share an idea for a project.
Canadian Maggie Kang’s animated movie KPop Demon Hunters has become a global sensation with record-breaking streams on Netflix and an estimated $20-million debut on the big screen.
“So one day my kid was sleeping in the back seat, and my husband and I … drove around the neighbourhood and just came up with this idea,” Kang said. “And it’s really a combination of a bunch of a few ideas that I had been kind of mulling over. And he said, ‘You know, why don’t you just put everything together?’ And it just became KPop Demon Hunters.”
For those who have managed to miss it since its June 20 premiere on Netflix, the movie follows the adventures of Rumi, Mira and Zoey. They are the three members of K-pop (Korean pop) girl group Huntr/x — an uber-popular act cashing in on the real-life popularity of South Korean pop culture.
But not only do they make music for fans, they make it to combat soul-eating demons — though they are mostly kept from the human world by a magical barrier (the Honmoon) reinforced by song. Huntr/x’s success at both pop and demon-hunting comes under threat when a demon band, the Saja Boys, usurps their fame — all while Rumi tries to hide her own demon ancestry from fans and even bandmates.
It’s a behemoth that Sony originally passed on, opting for an unprecedented relationship with Netflix where the streaming service basically operated as a distributor and investor while Sony helped on production. The reason, Kang said in an interview with The Ankler, was because of the alienating specificities of the plot: From the K-pop aspect to the all-Asian cast, selling KPop Demon Hunters to a North American audience wasn’t exactly a sure thing.
Billboard smash
But when tracking the movie’s stunning success, you don’t need to look further than the songs. The film’s soundtrack is the first ever to post four simultaneous Billboard top 10 hits. How It’s Done, Your Idol, Soda Pop and current No.1 hit Golden have spent weeks dominating the charts — while also making Huntr/x the first K-pop girl group to top the Hot 100.
“The movie is only about 90 minutes and the soundtrack totals around 30 minutes. So one-third of the movie has to be the music that is playing,” culture and entertainment journalist Daniel Anderson said.
He said that focus on the film’s musical component — necessitating collaboration between K-pop superstars, including Blackpink, Meovv, Ejae, under the direction of music producer Ian Eisendrath — is part of what launched KPop Demon Hunters into the stratosphere.
“It’s a combination of just really, really smart, experienced songwriters who understand K-pop but also who know how to weave that into this story that they’re trying to tell,” Anderson said.
But what really attracted people, he said, is the specificity and originality of its storytelling. While the plot itself isn’t completely unique, bringing together so many different interests into a melting pot wowed audiences. Instead of being too divisive to draw fans, it introduced those fans to a variety of interests — while drawing on the K-pop fandom’s propensity to share memes, fan art and social media posts to draw more attention to their favourite releases.
“It’s just really incredible to see these kind of seemingly disparate elements come together in such a smash hit,” Anderson said. “Because if anybody knows how to make something go viral, it is K-pop fans.”
Theatrical success
All of that success led to something new for a Netflix movie: a theatrical release after it had already premiered on the streaming service. Rival studios on Sunday estimated that KPop Demon Hunters led all movies over the weekend with an estimated $18 million to $20 million US in ticket sales at theatres in the U.S. and Canada.
Distribution executives from three studios shared their estimates for the Netflix phenomenon on condition of anonymity because the streaming company has a policy of not reporting ticket sales, The Associated Press reported.
Following a dominating few weeks as one of the most popular Netflix releases ever, the streamer put the film into 1,750 theatres for sing-along screenings on Saturday and Sunday. Studios are able to accurately estimate ticket sales for all releases on Sunday morning, although the uncommon nature of the KPop Demon Hunters releases means a wider variance.
The theatrical release, though limited, is out of the ordinary for Netflix, which has long stressed a commitment to subscriber releases. But it’s feeding into the film’s fame, and, Anderson said, will likely only lead to more success.
“We haven’t even begun to see the end of it because it is also eligible for awards contention at places like the Oscars and at the Grammys as well,” he said. “So, you know, coming up this award season, too, I think we’re going to be seeing more campaigning from them. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some more milestones being broken, too.”
“It’s very, very well positioned in terms of awards because the animation truly is absolutely gorgeous,” film critic Rachel Ho said. So much so, she said, that KPop Demon Hunters may work as a sort of “blueprint” for future films: launching first on streaming services before parlaying viral fame into successful theatrical residencies.
But when it comes to Demon Hunters specifically, she said its success was perhaps not as unlikely as predicted. Because whether or not Kang herself found success, it was likely inevitable that something drawn from the same source material would become a blockbuster in a society infatuated with K-pop.
“We’re seeing … a general popularity of Korean pop culture,” Ho said. “So whether it’s through music or dramas, even novels … this is kind of a culmination of that success that has been growing over the years.”
