KPop Demon Hunters doesn’t care in the event you like Ok-pop

[ad_1] Netflix’s mega-hit KPop Demon Hunters is now the streaming platform’s most popular movie of all time . However its ascendance as 2025’s shock cultural phenomenon extends far past the animated film itself.

It’s the music. It's the first soundtrack to have 4 songs within the prime 10 of the Billboard Scorching 100 on the identical time, with the only “Golden” reaching No. 1 for a number of weeks. The high-octane songs have the shiny manufacturing, catchy hooks, and charisma Korean pop is known for.

The story follows woman group trio Huntr/x, who adore their followers as a lot as slurping ramyeon. However there’s a twist: they lead double lives to guard the world from demons by means of their music. Standing of their manner are The Saja Boys. They’re demons masquerading as a human boy band, combating again with infectious pop tunes and 8-pack abs to thwart Huntr/x’s important mission.

That premise didn't impress Sony, the studio that made the film however in the end handed distribution to Netflix.

One of many the explanation why the film is so particular is that it honors k-pop’s standing as one of many world’s hottest genres, mentioned Rebecca Sun , writer of The Quiet Half Substack about cultural information and criticism. Ok-pop teams like Blackpink, BTS, TWICE, and NewJeans don’t at all times get as a lot love from American tastemakers, though their music and presence is actually all over the place.

“I discovered that each single challenge that highlights some form of traditionally excluded tradition or some subculture,” Solar mentioned, “they at all times are extra profitable if they simply throw you in there fairly than try to handhold you in some tacky manner.”

Beneath is an excerpt of a dialog between As we speak, Defined host Noel King and Solar, edited for size and readability. There’s extra within the full podcast, so hearken to As we speak, Defined wherever you get podcasts, together with Apple Podcasts , Pandora , and Spotify .

The place did this film come from? How did Netflix come up with it?

So that is one other good a part of the narrative.

The film is totally produced by Sony Photos Animation, which is the studio that made the Oscar-winning Spiderverse films. And the 2 administrators, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, had offers with Sony. So it was fully developed in-house inside Sony. They pitched Sony’s distribution arm they usually handed. Sony mentioned, yeah, I don’t assume we’re going to place this film out ourselves.

Concurrently, Sony had a first-look take care of Netflix. This was a deal that was struck across the time of the pandemic the place Netflix mentioned, “Hey, we promise that we are going to finance at the least one or two of your films a 12 months. We’ll put them on our streaming service and we’ll simply purchase them for you. So that you make them, we can pay, we reimburse you for the complete manufacturing finances and the remaining is historical past.”

And Sony was not the one entity to underestimate this film. You truly wrote in your Substack that you simply ignored an invite from Netflix to prescreen this film. Why? What was going by means of your head?

Okay, so to start with, I can't examine myself wherever to the extent of import as a participant on this universe.

Thanks. However that is what was going by means of my head: As someone who’s been overlaying leisure for a really very long time, I had been monitoring Ok-pop initiatives in Hollywood for a decade. Like, Hollywood has been making an attempt to make Ok-pop themed initiatives since at the least 2015, which is the earliest recognized challenge that I may discover. And so it was extra my cynicism in regards to the business’s historic failure to make a profitable scripted Ok-pop function.

However look, it wasn’t simply me. As a result of merchandising — you understand they tried, Netflix tried going to merch retailers to say, hey, do you wish to accomplice with us on this film we have now popping out, KPop Demon Hunters , and all of the merchandisers handed.

So yeah, no matter toy corporations handed on making stuffed Derpy tigers, they might have made a lot cash this summer season.

However this raises a really attention-grabbing query, proper, as a result of I don’t know a ton about Ok-pop, however I do know that Korean music and Korean films have had gorgeous world attraction for years now. Why, thus far, was no person capable of pull off this kind of film and why did this film hit, do you assume?

One commonality I discovered in all the Ok-pop initiatives that by no means made it to the end line was they had been all written from the perspective of what I name the outsider’s gaze. So there have been a number of initiatives the place the protagonist was a Westerner, and most often a white character, who was imported to Korea to the Ok-pop scene for some purpose. It’s at all times been this fish out of water trope. And I believe that that comes from studio executives who themselves are usually not Ok-pop followers, however have simply learn within the papers that Ok-pop is huge. They had been like, let’s do a Ok-pop factor, however let’s ensure that this unique factor is sensible to individuals. They’re making an attempt to form of reverse-engineer its reputation.

Whereas KPop Demon Hunters , what’s attention-grabbing about it's that it takes place in a universe the place [it’s] simply assumed that each single particular person on the planet, each single character within the film is obsessive about Ok-pop. Each single particular person from children to outdated males on the sauna hearken to Ok-pop, take part within the subculture’s rituals, and there’s no clarification.

I used to be speaking to some associates, they're 4 and 6 years outdated, they usually had been telling me how a lot they love KPop Demon Hunters . And I used to be speaking to their mother at one level over their heads. And we had been saying like, okay, we get it.