The runaway animated hit has broken Netflix records, topped the Billboard charts and even dominated theaters. Northeastern experts say it’s an extension of Korean culture’s global reach –– and a sign of things to come.
If you haven’t seen the Netflix movie “KPop Demon Hunters,” you’ve probably heard its chart-topping songs. If you haven’t experienced either, you probably will soon.
Netflix released the animated fantasy action musical in June and it quickly — and unexpectedly — became a bonafide, almost unavoidable global phenomenon. The movie centers on a fictional K-pop group, Huntrix, as they perform for their adoring fans and, of course, fight demons.
By every metric, it’s been a huge hit. The movie has remained steadfast in Netflix’s own viewership ratings, with 949 million minutes watched in July alone, as kids and parents have reported re-watching the movie upwards of a dozen times. Its songs have charted on the Billboard Top 10 for weeks. “KPop Demon Hunters” has been such a success that Netflix even put the movie out in theaters for a limited set of sing-along showings, giving the streamer its first theatrical hit.
Why has an animated demon-hunting musical taken over the world?
Part of it has to do with “KPop Demon Hunters” itself and part of it has to do with the global reach of Korean culture, specifically K-pop, that exists today, says Viviane Kim, an assistant teaching professor of design at Northeastern University.
“KPop Demon Hunters” is the latest beneficiary of the massive global audience that exists around K-pop and the wave of Korean culture that has hit the West, otherwise known as Hallyu. The South Korean government estimated that global Hallyu fans numbered more than 200 million in 2024. In other words, Korean culture is global culture.
However, the movie’s success can’t just be chalked up to the current cultural moment, says Kim, who hails from South Korea and teaches her students about K-Culture. The movie itself actually mirrors the same branding, marketing and creative playbook that K-pop itself uses to build a fanbase, albeit with a slight twist, Kim says.
“How K-pop [labels] usually market their boy band or girl band is they come up with a really strong storytelling strategy,” Kim says. “Before they even launch the music or reveal who they are, they [release] a bunch of short videos with a story of why they exist. That makes all the songs that they release very strong and meaningful so that people start to get curious about what’s coming up next because it’s like a series of dramas or episodes that we are longing to watch.”
The way co-directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans weave music into the movie effectively mimics that approach, stringing the audience along with one K-pop earworm after another.
Those earworms are another reason the movie has been such a hit, Kim says.
Kang and Appelhans didn’t just want the music to imitate K-pop — they wanted certified K-pop hits. So, they enlisted a team of music producers, including Teddy Park, co-founder of The Black Label, the label behind the chart-topping K-pop group Blackpink.
That approach worked. Songs like “Golden,” “Your Idol” and “Soda Pop” have remained on the Billboard Top 10 — and in viewers’ ears — for months.
The movie is also fast-paced in a way that seems designed for younger viewers who have come of age with TikTok and short-form media, Kim says.
“A lot of scenes are switching in a very fast manner and the story develops really fast,” Kim says. “It’s almost like a game. … It’s giving feedback right away. It’s instant feedback from the movie, just like how they’re interacting with digital devices.”
However, Kim is also quick to point to creatives like Kang, children of Korean immigrants who are starting to look at their own culture with a mix of familiarity and distance that allows them “to capture the very essence of Korean history, Korean culture in their own perspective.”
“I was basically just trying to make something that I wanted to see: a movie that celebrated Korean culture,” Kang told the New York Times.
Whether “KPop Demon Hunters” has the kind of cultural thumbprint of “Frozen” or “Encanto” is still up for grabs, but it’s already leaving ripples in Hollywood. For Netflix to opt to release a streaming movie in theaters, even for a limited time, is not just rare but unprecedented.
Steve Granelli, a teaching professor of communication studies at Northeastern, says the movie’s theatrical success is a promising sign for theaters in the age of streaming. However, he warns it’s not a guaranteed strategy.
“K-pop Demon Hunters” has an “embedded performance quality to it” that makes perfect sense for a communal theatergoing experience. Singing and cheering are almost built into the movie’s design.
“There’s a level of energy and effort that people are going to put into consumption of a particular type of art or experience,” Granelli explains. “That’s rare. I don’t see this as a verifiable kind of model moving forward for all releases. I see this as an option, but it’s a very narrow target to try to hit to be able to pull this off.”
“But if that means allowing people to experience [a movie] collectively and putting it in theaters and making it an additional revenue stream, great,” Granelli adds. “That’s great for theaters, great for them still being seen as gathering places where we can all experience something collectively.”