“KPop Demon Hunters” has had a very big week.
The movie, produced by Sony Pictures Animation and released on Netflix on June 20, had special “sing-along” screenings across the country on Saturday and Sunday. Despite only playing for two days, the animated musical about a group of Korean pop stars who fight immortal demons, made $19.2 million. It was enough to earn the film the #1 spot for the weekend box office, the first Netflix movie to ever achieve that feat.
A few days later, bolstered by sustained viewership since its release, “KPop Demon Hunters” officially became the #1 most-watched Netflix original film of all time, with 236 million views.
And then its soundtrack now holds the distinction of being the first to have four simultaneous Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. At the time of writing, the movie holds the #2 (the original version) and #3 (the sing-along version) slots on the Netflix top 10. Talk about golden.
When TheWrap spoke to directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans about all the milestones on Tuesday, they seemed, well, exhausted.
“I was in Korea, then I flew to JFK, and I got picked up and dropped off at a very loud sing-along in New York and then got on a karaoke sing-along bus,” Kang said. “It was a lot of, Where am I?”
“We had Rei Ami and Kevin Woo, who are both singing voices in the movie. They were there and they’re just performing their characters on the bus,” said Appelhans. “And then the kids who were in the screening were just gathered at the bottom of the bus like a mob of fans. It was a very real, very meta Saja Boys, Huntr/x performance.”
For Kang, the sing-along screening was an eye-opening experience and spoke to just how huge a phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters” has become.
“For me, when you are on social media like Twitter and Instagram, you see the older fans posting content, and you see some kids, but you don’t really realize what the scale of that fandom is, with young girls especially,” Kang said.
At the sing-along she saw so many kids dressed up as the characters or wearing their Huntr/x or Saja Boys merchandise. She said that she realized “this is like ‘Sailor Moon’ to them or a Disney Princess thing.” “I didn’t fully realize that until that sing-along moment,” Kang said. These kids were not just singing the songs but they knew every word to the movie and were “getting so excited for every little moment that they knew were coming up.”
“It’s a different experience to watch a movie that everybody knows and already loves –it’s like going to a concert. Everyone’s there to be part of this party and this celebration,” Kang said. “It’s something I haven’t experienced really.”
“Everyone has experienced the living room version of this movie and it’s built a certain affection. But then this weekend was like they’re experiencing the concert version of that. And that’s a another thing,” said Appelhans. “Kids going down to the front of the theaters and all dancing in the finale. The movie is all about this music as this connective thing, and then it’s happening in real life in this unprecedented way. It’s wonderful to have it live in a different version of itself for a weekend.”
When asked what the biggest surprise has been in the whirlwind response to the film, Kang recounted a story from her trip to Korea, which was the first time she had been there since “KPop Demon Hunters” had been released.
“I was really experiencing firsthand how monumental this movie has been, in terms of something that’s culturally representing Korea out there and being treated as this massive beacon for Koreans,” Kang said.
She visited the National History Museum, where attendance has doubled in the last few months since the movie had come out. “People are lining up to look at the art of the tiger, because they love Derpy,” Kang said of the mystical tiger in the film. “It’s not just foreign visitors, it’s Korean nations that live there. They want to relearn their culture,” Kang said.
She got to meet the director of the museum, who is a well-known professor and whose book on Korean culture has become an international best-seller. “He was so proud of what the movie has been doing for Korean culture,” Kang said. “He was holding my hand the entire time and took me around the museum. It’s just crazy to get this amazing person who knows so much about our history, who wanted to meet me and thank me for this movie.”
He told her, “I can see all the details that you guys put in there and how it’s representing us out there in the world. You’ve been able combine the modern with the history and it’s the first time people have really seen that.”
Kang also got to meet the president of South Korea and was part of a panel about continuing to support young talent and the younger generation of creators to help “promote our culture on the global stage.”
Appelhans said that his favorite experience happened just yesterday.
“My son is half-Korean, about five years old, and his grandparents are always getting him to try and speak Korean. He’s started kindergarten, so he’s not sure how he feels about all this, like, is this Korean thing cool or not?” Appelhans said. The director’s wife took his son to one of the sing-along screenings, because he hadn’t actually watched the movie yet.
“When he was watching it and the songs were going, he turned to my wife with big kid eyes, and was like, ‘Mom, they’re singing in Korean.’ It was emotional, because at least for her, she didn’t get to grow up with that as an asset. It wasn’t really cool to speak Korean, so to see him maybe owning some of that part of his identity was emotional,” Appelhans said.
As for what is the next phase of the “KPop Demon Hunters” rollout, besides the sequel (and new merchandise, some of which will be revealed later this week), Appelhans said that he’s most excited about live performances. Members of TWICE performed “Takedown” at Lollapalooza a few weeks ago. A drone performance from Netflix followed, reading “The Honmoon is closed.” (The crowed erupted.)
“We’ve been hearing about some live performance stuff, which I don’t know any details, but that sounds really exciting,” said Appelhans. “We have this weird phenomenon with the cast, the voice and the singing cast, where they really feel like the characters.
Appelhans said that Ahn Hyo-seop, who voices Jinu, the leader of the Saja Boys, was doing a big convention in Singapore. “He was doing a line of dialogue from the movie and the whole crowd is just fainting live, because it’s like, It’s Jinu,” said Appelhans. “That’s rare in animation. A lot of times there’s not that sort of symmetry.”
But with “KPop Demon Hunters,” that symmetry is everywhere.
“It should be fun to see what they come up with for live stuff,” Appelhans said. And given the sustained trajectory of viewership that drove the film to become the most-watched Netflix movie of all time, interest in the movie, the songs and the world won’t slow down anytime soon.
