Maggie Kang, the creator and co-director of Kpop Demon Hunters, has said she is “excited for the potential for more stories” involving the animated girl group Huntr/x.
Speaking to the BBC during a visit to Europe, Kang explained that while there was “nothing official we can talk about”, she and co-director Chris Appelhans believe “there’s definitely more we can do with these characters in this world”.
“And whatever it will be, it will be a story that deserves to be a sequel, and it will be something that we want to see,” she added.
Kpop Demon Hunters has become a cultural phenomenon this year, overtaking Squid Game as the most-watched title in Netflix history, with more than 325 million views.
The animated film tells the story of a hugely successful female Kpop trio, who play enormous concerts at the same time as trying to save the world from evil forces.
They end up locked in battle against a boy band called Saja Boys, who are made up of demons.
The film has broken record after record. A sing-along version released in cinemas in August became the first-ever Netflix film to top the US box office.
Its music also topped the US singles and albums charts, becoming the first soundtrack in history to have four songs simultaneously in the US top 10, something not even Saturday Night Fever could achieve.
The film’s anthem Golden, sung by Huntr/x, has spent eight weeks at number one, tying Sugar Sugar by The Archies for the most time at the top of the charts by an animated act.
Could the Oscars go Golden?
There is now a real belief that Kpop Demon Hunters could be set to slay the Oscars.
Critics have loved the film, which holds a score of 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the online review aggregator.
The influential Gold Derby predictions website now has it as the favourite for the best animated film, ahead of Zootopia 2 and Elio.
“The title alone is obviously Oscar bait,” laughs Chris Appelhans, the American who is the other half of the directing duo.
“We tried to do something new, and it was really hard, and I think we’re really proud of how it came out. But if people are going to reward that, that would be awesome.”
The other category where the film should be a strong challenger is best original song, where the rules state that any film can only enter three numbers.
Netflix have already stated that breakout hit Golden will be included for Academy consideration, but what about the other two slots?
“I think Your Idol is such a banger,” says Kang about the song the Saja Boys sing while feeding the souls of their audience to the evil overlord Gwi-Ma.
“We’re so proud of the song, but also the sequence. We cheered, we were so proud of it.”
Appelhans, however, is team Huntr/x, opting for What it Sounds Like.
“The finale was such a technical challenge, both in songwriting and storytelling,” he explains. “To make a song that was the climax of your movie, with a lot of moving parts, but was also an actual cathartic song.”
Kang concurs: “It’s the one song that every time I hear it, I just cry. It’s very emotional.”
“No room for Soda Pop?” I question about the Saja Boys earworm.
“Maybe we could get four?” laughs Kang.
“We’ll just submit then all,” joins in Appelhans.
Summer of success
Appelhans can pinpoint the exact moment back in June when he realised they had a hit on their hands.
“It’s literally 2 am the night after the film came out. I’m on TikTok and in the comments section, they are perfectly articulating Rumi’s emotional journey.”
He was overjoyed that the fans were already engaging with the film’s main protagonist on a deep level.
Kang, who was born in South Korea and moved to Canada aged five, places the breakthrough moment as slightly later.
“We were able to connect with our core audience, which is the KPop audience and the animation fans, and that demographic took to our film very quickly.
“But it was the third week when the trajectory of the graph of viewership really changed. We were like, ‘Woah. That was weird.’
“And we could see through our social media all the different pockets of demographics that were connecting to it.”
Kang believes that the fans have been crucial in the film’s all-conquering rise: “They are an age group that loves to make content. And it was kind of like free advertising. They were just spreading the word of this movie everywhere. I think that helped it develop these long legs.”
The film’s success continues to grow. Four months after its release, it was still the most-watched film in 19 countries last week, including the UK and US.
The Kpop stars Rei Ami, Audrey Nuna, and EJAY, who provide the singing voices for Huntr/x, have appeared on both Saturday Night Live (in a skit with Bad Bunny) and gave their first-ever live performance of Golden on Jimmy Fallon’s US chat show.
“We were so bummed that we weren’t able to be there at Fallon,” says Kang in a rare moment of non-total positivity.
“We were asleep in Paris. Just to see him speaking to our girls was so weird. It now feels more real than ever. I’m just so proud of them.
One thing the pair would like to clear up is that they do not believe that their film should be classified as anime.
“I don’t think we are big enough anime fans to be that inspired from it,” explains Kang.
“The anime we like are very old school, like Cowboy Bebop and Sailor Moon,” referencing two Japanese TV shows which originated in the 90s.
Appelhans agrees: “I think it was a flavour. I think we were influenced by a lot of Korean film-makers and k-dramas. It was part of a wide spectrum of tones that we wanted to hit, but not the dominant one.”
No live-action adaptation
They are also quick to rule out rumours of a Kpop Demon Hunters live-action adaptation.
Kang wants to kick that idea into the underworld: “There’s so many elements of the tone and the comedy that are so suited for animation,” she says.
“It’s really hard to imagine these characters in a live action world. It would feel too grounded. So totally it wouldn’t work for me.”
For Appelhans, it is an ill-conceived idea: “One of the great things about animation is that you make these composites of impossibly great attributes. Rumi can be this goofy comedian and then singing and doing a spinning back-kick a second later, and then free-falling through the sky.
“The joy of animation is how far you can push and elevate what’s possible. I remember they adapted a lot of different animes and often times, it just feels a little stilted.”
No matter what happens this awards season, Kang says their expectations for the film have already been more than surpassed.
She surmises that the aim was “to connect people and bring them to Kpop”.
“Just seeing people bond over this movie has been so wonderful,” she reflects.
“So all the awards would be great, but I think we feel really incredible about what the movie has done already. So it feels like we’ve kind of won in a way.”
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