You haven't heard of it. Your children are obsessed by it. And it's giving Disney nightmares

Yahoo

a day ago

If you haven't come across KPop Demon Hunters, one of the most successful films in Netflix history, it's because you don't know anyone under the age of 16. The animation is so intensely beloved by children that one mum, Lucy, recalls meeting a friend at a wedding in late July who was genuinely amazed she hadn't yet seen it.
'Just you wait,' Lucy's friend warned. Three days later, during a mini-break, Lucy's children put on KPop Demon Hunters 'and I can honestly say that, from that moment, a day has not yet passed when Golden [which is number one in both the UK and US charts] hasn't been played at least seven times in our house at high volume,' she says.
'The dance routines have been reworked by my seven-year-old daughter. My son – two years older – tries to be cool, surreptitiously watching the fight scenes from the doorway when he thinks no one is looking. The soundtrack has accompanied me into work for the past five days. It's banging. You can't say that about Snow White, can you?' says Lucy.
Defeating Snow White is Netflix's intention. In September 2020, the streamer's chief executive (now chairman) Reed Hastings said he wanted 'to beat Disney in family animation', adding 'that's going to take a while'. He seems to be getting it right. KPop Demon Hunters is well on the way to being to 2025 what Disney's Frozen was to 2013 – an inescapable cultural phenomenon.
KPop Demon Hunters is a little hard to explain. It draws a lot from Korean mythology and pop culture and then merges them, like a K-pop Hannah Montana meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Frozen. There's a cursory backstory about demons roaming the Earth, sucking energy from human souls to feed their king until three female hunters arrived who could slay them with bows, arrows and swords. The hunters were also singers, whose songs filled people with hope and created a musical soul barrier that keeps demons in hell.
Fast-forward to 21st century Seoul and K-pop superstars Huntr/x (pronounced Huntrix) – AKA Rumi the singer, Mira the dancer, and Zoey the rapper – are also demon hunters, obviously, and on the verge of such spectacular global fame that they could make the soul barrier permanent. But Rumi has a secret – her dad was a demon. So when the demon king puts together a boyband, Saja Boys, led by the fallen musician Jinu – who Rumi then falls in love with – all hell breaks loose. Only female friendship can defeat the dark forces of the abyss.
There are lots of K-pop songs (catering to the rising appetite for South Korean culture in the West, popularised by groups such as Blackpink and BTS) and lots of scenes in Hell – and it's possible that for certain demographics these two things are not dissimilar. But the audience for KPop Demon Hunters is not those people; it's Disney's core princess audience of tween girls. Or at least, the original audience was. It's now family-wide, strongly aimed at 18 to 44-year-olds as well as children.
Netflix launched the film on June 20, directly up against Pixar's Elio, which was predicted to be a box office hit. KPop received little marketing support, although it was released in enough cinemas to make it an Oscar contender, and the film's first week numbers were modest, with just 9.2 million views on Netflix. Elio's opening weekend was equally unimpressive, taking $20 million in the US against its projected $30 million.
Week two, everything changed. KPop jumped to 24.2 million viewers and kept rising – it became the first Netflix original film to reach a new viewing peak in its sixth week with 26.3 million views, up on the previous week's 25.8 million and 24.2 million the week before that. By the end of week six, the film had been viewed 132.5 million times. This isn't typical for Netflix movies, which tend to behave like box office movies – launching and then tailing off. These ongoing high numbers are usually reserved for a summer blockbuster such as Top Gun: Maverick. It's not exactly like for like, but it's safe to say that in the first week of August, KPop Demon Hunters was seen by more people than the US box office top 10 combined.
All seven songs from the soundtrack – written and performed by established K-pop talent – charted, making it the first streaming era soundtrack to debut in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 and increase in its second, third and fourth week of release. However, only Golden peaked at the top spot; the official video has been viewed on YouTube more than 130 million times.
Netflix hadn't prepared merchandise, so had to rapidly clone cuddly toys given to the crew at the end of production. Its toy tiger and a Hunter/x T-Shirt are now Netflix's best-selling merchandise of the year. Elio's box office, in comparison, dropped 50 per cent in the second week and another 50 per cent in the third.
Disney has had flops before that are now regarded as classics – Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio both failed to recoup their budgets when released. And the company is still knocking out billion-dollar films, such as 2024 sequels Inside Out 2 and Moana 2, but since Covid it seems to have lost its touch, laden with flops such as Wish, Elemental, and Lightyear that prioritise message over story.
Even when Disney films have a lot in common with KPop Demon Hunters, like Pixar's 2022's Turning Red (which had K-pop, teen girl friendship and supernatural powers), they don't work. That film tanked spectacularly, taking $21.8m against a budget of $175m.
While KPop Demon Hunters may seem like it came out of nowhere, it's actually part of a carefully prepared formula, says Daoud Jackson, a senior analyst in media and entertainment at Omdia.
'Netflix had a kids hit with Arcane, an anime series based on the League of Legends video game, which has a large number of characters,' he explains. 'League of Legends have sophisticated spin-offs including some of the female characters in their own anime with a virtual band called KDA. Meanwhile the highest-grossing Japanese animated film ever isn't a Studio Ghibli film; it's Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. Demon chasing is big in that market.'
This made Netflix very receptive when Sony Pictures Animation turned down a pitch from one of its animators, Maggie Kang. Kang had previously worked on titles including Puss in Boots and Rise of the Guardians, and pitched KPop as a film inspired by her Korean heritage, drawing on elements of mythology, demonology, and K-pop. (Although, because Kang and her creative partner Chris Appelhans were both Sony employees, Netflix ended up financing and distributing the film while Sony handled the creative.)
Kang said she wanted something different from 'Marvel female superheroes that were just sexy and cool and badass', instead having 'girls who had potbellies and burped and were crass and silly and fun'.
It worked. 'As soon as my almost-four-year-old daughter saw the KPop Demon Hunters trailer on Netflix, she was obsessed,' says one mum. 'It was out with the general rotation of Moana and Lilo & Stitch, and in with the girls of Huntr/x. This has translated to the car, where the Disney playlist has been replaced by the K-pop soundtrack.'
Disney seems to have forgotten how to entertain kids, keep parents happy and dominate the culture as it used to – leaving the way clear for Netflix, which is already planning a Kpop sequel and a possible spin-off stage show. The House of Mouse is instead turning to formula: look out for Zootopia 2, Toy Story 5, Ice Age 6 and Frozen III in the next 18 months.
'Disney has different incentives to a lot of other companies in that it has a very sophisticated way of monetising its IP through theme parks, which make loads of money, cruise ships and merchandising,' Jackson explains. 'It doesn't need new hits in the same way. It makes the repeat hits to invest in existing IP. It looks boring to the outside, but a film like Mufasa on streaming is helping the Lion King brand and keeping it fresh for a new audience.'
It means Disney has retreated from its message movies – the young hero of Elio who ends up saving the world after being mistaken for a global ambassador was originally 'queer-coded' before all references were scrubbed – but those are replaced by a focus on an endless loop of slight tweaks to stories we've seen before, to help boost theme park rides or merchandise.
As Rumi is told in Kpop Demon Hunters, 'focus is good, but focusing on one part leads to ignoring other parts, making you separated, isolated'. Disney can learn a lot from these girls.
KPop Demon Hunters is currently streaming on Netflix
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Solve the daily Crossword