If there’s one thing the metaphorical construct called Hollywood loves, it’s a success story—mostly because that nearly always manifests as piles of cash. K-Pop Demon Hunters has somehow found that footing as a cultural sensation, a musical fantasy that straddles demographics and has captured the imagination of the geeking world. The film has become the most-watched English language film of all time on Netflix, despite the film having been given to first-time feature director Maggie Kang and having no major stars.
On Tuesday, Netflix announced that KPop now ranks at the top of ts list of most-watched English-language films with 236 million total views, ahead of previous crownholder Red Notice, starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot. That’s quite a feat for a film such as KPop that’s aimed at families and females 25 and younger. (Netflix’s all-time Top Ten list is based on views in a title’s first 91 days of release.)
The film’s soundtrack now has four simultaneous Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, led by Huntrix’s “Golden,” and it’s the first soundtrack ever to do so.
At this point Sony is probably rethinking their reasoning for letting this one slip out of the gate without a leash. They obviously didn’t think it was worth a theatrical release, and thought that it just wasn’t worth the risk. Instead, Sony could be looking at a profit margin of between 20 to 30 percent, roughly double what studios typically hope for. Their deal, which was part of a larger, multi-title deal struck in 2021 during the depths of the pandemic, had Netflix paying for the entire $100 million production budget, plus a fee of $25 million. Sony gets the soundtrack rights and publishing fees for certain songs. Netflix, though, gets the merch rights. Everybody’s making bank on this.
Sony also gets a portion of the money Netflix is paying Sony’s animation company Imageworks, home of the visually groundbreaking, Oscar-winning Spider-Verse films (like Spider-Verse, an Oscar campaign is being planned for Demon Hunters).
The film’s writer / director Maggie Kang makes a cameo early on as the flight attendant watering the plants with coffee.
Kang and her co-director Chris Appelhans have spoken publicly in the broadest strokes about a possible sequel, and are considered integral to the future of Demon Hunters. Sony insiders say they have held preliminary conversations with the directors but as of yet, there is no deal on the table. The first priority is to sort out the money. Now that K-Pop Demon Hunters is an over-the-top hit, negotations will be a lot more closely parsed by both sides, and neither side can make the film without the other.
K-Pop Demon Hunters stars Arden Cho, May Hong and Ji-young Woo,
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