The Rise of K-Pop Demon Hunters
Natalie McCleery ‘29
mccleeryngr92@lakeforest.edu
Staff Writer
This summer, Netflix broke its own record of its most watched original movie ever, and it wasn’t with some thriller or action movie. According Netflix’s website, the movie that has gotten over 300 million views and over 500 million hours streamed since its June 20th release is KPop Demon Hunters. Aptly named, this feature, produced by Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix, is about a K-pop girl group Huntr/x. The girls are superstars by day, and have secret identities as demon hunters. The group’s members Rumi, Mira, and Zoe must carry on the traditional mantle of hunters that protect humans from the demons. They must (dance) battle rival group Saja Boys, who are actually demons sent to foil Huntr/x, in order to protect humanity once and for all. It is a feel-good movie that emphasizes the importance of friendship and growing past your mistakes.
During the masterclass that Director Maggie Kang taught at the Netflix Creative Asia conference, production for the movie started back in 2022. The screenplay was co-written by Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan, Maggie Kang, and Chris Appelhans. KPop Demon Hunters utilized bright colors and music to create something new for audiences. At the conference Kang said she was inspired by the mythology of her home country along with the modern phenomenon of K-Pop and its ability to connect people across cultures. The movie features 12 original songs, 2 of which are created by real life girl group TWICE. TWICE has over 26.5 million listeners on Spotify, has gone on several world tours, and headlined Chicago’s Lollapalooza music festival. The soundtrack is incredibly catchy and definitely helped launch the movie to number 1 on Netflix. Several of the songs have spent weeks on the Billboard Top 100, with “Golden” being number 1 on US charts for 3 weeks and UK charts for 6 weeks. This is the highest a soundtrack has ranked in almost 30 years.
The craze for KPop Demon Hunters shows no sign of slowing down, and according to The Hollywood Reporter talks of a sequel is already in the works. Its popularity has spilled into other aspects of pop culture with its music being used for this upcoming season of ABC’s dance competition show Dancing with the Stars. This summer at Lollapalooza TWICE included references to the movie in their set and accompanying light show. There are even rumors that popular video game Fortnite will be collabing with the movie and introducing purchasable “skins” where players can play as Rumi, Mira, or Zoe.
Combining pop culture and ancient mythology has proven to be a massive commercial success for the film. Signs show that it will continue breaking records both in Netflix views and music streams in the near future. Hopefully the global popularity of this movie shows an increasingly positive future for more cultural diversity in film and animation.