This summer’s zeitgeist-defining animated film isn’t coming from theaters. It’s coming from streaming with Netflix/Sony Animation’s “KPop Demon Hunters,” which has defied gravity in a way that no film in the streamer’s history has ever achieved before.
Since its June 20 release, the original English-language animated film about Huntr/x, a K-Pop trio who uses their music and sharp blades to protect Korea from soul-devouring demons, has only snowballed in popularity, passing “Carry-On” and the Oscar-nominated “Don’t Look Up” this week to become the second most-watched film in Netflix history. And in two weeks, theaters will finally be able to partake in the cultural phenomenon when a sing-along version hits the big screen for a limited weekend engagement.
The rise of “KPop Demon Hunters” comes as Hollywood faces a conundrum on how to get the public engaged with new stories and characters — a problem that has deepened with the box office failure of Disney/Pixar’s “Elio.” While “Hunters” faced the same struggle to build pre-release buzz that has plagued its theatrical counterparts, its rise to viral sensation came by following a path that was only made possible by going straight to streaming.
“We’ve seen a lot of films over the last couple of years like ‘Lilo & Stitch’ start as a streaming film and end up in theaters, and that switch has been the right call,” said one studio executive who spoke to TheWrap anonymously. “This is a case where the opposite was true: A film got the most out of going right to streaming.”
It’s just another indication of how far animated films have fallen in theaters this summer. With the exception of the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, every summer box office since 1998, the year of Disney’s “Mulan,” has yielded at least one animated film with a domestic box office total of $100 million or more, peaking last year with the animation record $653 million domestic total of “Inside Out 2.”
Unless DreamWorks’ “The Bad Guys 2,” which has a $43.4 million domestic total after two weekends, is able to leg out in the coming weeks, that streak will end in 2025. “Elio,” despite positive critical and audience reception, bombed against its tentpole budget with a $72.6 million domestic total, while Paramount’s latest “Smurfs” film made even less with $30.2 million.
It’s been live-action/CGI remakes of animated classics “Lilo & Stitch” ($421.6M domestic/$1.02B worldwide) and “How to Train Your Dragon” ($261.5M domestic/$623.5M worldwide) that have done much of the heavy lifting for family turnout.
The common trend for original theatrical animation over the past three years is that, at a time when families are looking to get their money’s worth from a day at the movies, it has become harder to build pre-release interest without familiar IP as a selling point. Pixar’s “Elemental,” the most prominent of a precious few successes, had to ride overwhelming post-release buzz to overcome a poor opening weekend.
“KPop Demon Hunters” had to face a bit of that pre-release struggle as well. The film notched 9.3 million views on Netflix in its first two days of release, and the muted reaction to the film’s (admittedly smaller-scale) online marketing and trailers — the first one came out right as “Lilo & Stitch” was hitting theaters — gave no indication it was about to be a global phenomenon. It’s possible that the film’s rather literal and almost parodic title might have put off some potential viewers who aren’t already fans of K-pop acts like Blackpink or Le Sserafim.
“I get why Sony decided not to release [‘Hunters’] in theaters. It would have been too hard a sell theatrically, especially with the marketing spend they would have needed to give it a chance,” a rival studio executive told TheWrap. “I don’t think a low opening weekend could have been avoided, and then the word-of-mouth gets saddled with the headlines that come from that. Not insurmountable, but definitely tough.”
But the film’s seven songs, most notably its marquee showstopper “Golden,” rocketed up the Billboard Hot 100 (the song hit No. 1 last week), and its rise up Netflix’s all-time viewership charts soon followed. This past week, “KPop Demon Hunters” added 25.4 million views to bring its total on Netflix to 184.6 million views over 52 days, passing the 172 million logged by “Carry-On” in its first 90 days on streaming last year.
The music’s key factor to raising awareness and interest has drawn frequent comparisons to Disney’s “Frozen” and its lead song “Let It Go.” Since the pandemic, there’s been only one animated comparison: Disney’s “Encanto,” which made $96 million domestic in an abbreviated 2021 theatrical run sandbagged by a COVID outbreak that kept many families at home, only for the song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” to become a viral sensation after the film’s Disney+ release at Christmas.
Likewise, “KPop Demon Hunter’s” songs turbocharged the film’s virality, with several actual K-pop groups getting in on the fun. In one TikTok clip with over 3.4 million likes, the group Zerobaseone re-enacted the choreography from “Soda Pop,” a song performed by the Saja Boys, a group of demons disguised as a rival band to Huntr/x.
@zb1_official Fєєℓ тнє ѕσ∂α POP 𓈒 𓏸 .ᐟ #ZEROBASEONE #ZB1 #제로베이스원 #SUNGHANBIN #SEOKMATTHEW #KIMGYUVIN #PARKGUNWOOK #HANYUJIN #성한빈 #석매튜 #김규빈 #박건욱 #한유진 ♬ Soda Pop – Saja Boys & Andrew Choi & Neckwav & Danny Chung & Kevin Woo & samUIL Lee & KPop Demon Hunters Cast
You can see this over and over on social media, with fans (including plenty of kids) re-enacting the choreography to each of the musical numbers in the film, sometimes right next to the TV screen. Its incorporation of so many of the K-pop genre’s elements is what the film’s fandom loves about it — and its immediate availability on streaming enabled Netflix to capitalize quickly.
That also played into the film’s popularity with kids and families — the ability to rewatch it over and over upon release has no doubt contributed to its steady viewership as parents put “KPop Demon Hunters” into their regular rotation alongside “Frozen” and “Bluey.”
“The thing about virality, whenever it happens, is that it can never be exactly replicated,” said Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango. “They’re always taking advantage of unique circumstances.”
By allowing the public to share clips from the film, Netflix helped the word-of-mouth spread faster than any original animated film in theaters has enjoyed. A quick search on YouTube will bring up supercuts of every scene of various characters in the film, from Huntr/x’s exuberant manager Bobby to the six-eyed magpie and clumsy tiger who accompany the Saja Boys’ demonic leader, Jinu.
Forget hastily taken phone videos of Marvel post-credit scenes with poor quality. These are full-resolution rips that started spreading online within days of the film’s release. In lieu of having a name-recognized director (like “Sinners” with Ryan Coogler) or recognizable IP (pick any number of animated sequels that spawned viral crazes like “Gentleminions“) this became a key way to draw non-K-pop fans to “Demon Hunters,” showing them the action, humor, colors and unique animation style without spoiling everything in a single video.
It’s hard to imagine any of this being replicated with a theatrical release. The closest parallel comes from more than a decade ago with “Pitch Perfect” in 2012, a film that opened to a $5 million limited release in 335 theaters and then capitalized on word-of-mouth to leg out a $65 million domestic run.
Maybe the exciting Huntr/x performances would’ve prompted cheering re-enactments from teens in the auditorium, similar to the “Naatu Naatu” craze that surrounded “RRR” or the “chicken jockey” meme that boosted “A Minecraft Movie” beyond what it could have made solely off of interest in its video game source material. Even with the negative publicity that has come with some theaters having to deal with these rowdy parties getting way out of hand, it could have increased the film’s FOMO factor.
But so far, there just hasn’t been a single original, family friendly theatrical release — even “Elemental,” this decade’s top original animated grosser — that has captured the global zeitgeist the way “KPop Demon Hunters” has through immediate shareability and at-home availability, neither of which required an expensive theatrical marketing campaign.
Sony, for its part, will finally contribute an original theatrical animated release next year with the animal basketball film “Goat,” which like “KPop Demon Hunters” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” uses the frame rate manipulation which has become Sony Pictures Animation’s signature style. Sony has already telegraphed its marketing campaign for the film, releasing it around NBA All-Star weekend and running ads during the upcoming NBA season to connect the film with its producer and hoops legend Steph Curry.
But marketing an animated film about sports fits neatly into Hollywood’s established marketing strategies. “KPop Demon Hunters,” not so much. Hollywood will be trying to capitalize off the genre’s craze soon. Hot off the rise of Huntr/x, Paramount is partnering with the Korean entertainment company Hybe to produce an original film based around K-pop starring “Demon Hunters” voice actor Ji-young Yoo that will hit theaters in February 2027.
Through Hybe, Paramount could find a way to effectively market that film to its core audience and get them to theaters, even as it is set to hit the big screen on Super Bowl weekend. It’s a smart partnership, because as Robbins noted, K-pop isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and Hollywood would be wise to figure out how to make it theatrically viable whether in live-action or animated form.
“‘KPop Demon Hunters’ touched on a young audience that outside of concert films hasn’t really been served by Hollywood until now,” Robbins said. “But that audience is global, and it’s getting bigger. Netflix found a way to meet that audience where they were, and it paid off big.”
