The KPop Demon Hunters directors on fan theories and a potential sequel

It’s easy to get lost in the numbers with KPop Demon Hunters: the most-viewed Netflix film of all time, number one singles that have outlasted albums from Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, and a fictional K-pop girl group that is currently outselling their real-world counterparts. But underpinning this spectacular success is actually a call to engage with the personal stories behind the celebrity – a message that holds as much truth for K-Pop Demon Hunters’ characters as it does for the film itself.

For directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, the premise of KPop Demon Hunters was simple: a story about the power of music. The film follows fictional K-pop trio Huntr/x, global superstars who have inherited the ancient duty of fighting demons with songs delivered by Korean-American vocalists EJAE, Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna. The group functions much like their real-world counterparts, adhering to a jam-packed schedule of fan signings, press appearances and stadium tours, but, behind the scenes, lead singer Rumi is grappling with a dark secret that threatens to undo all of their hard work. 

Set in Korea, but written almost entirely in English, KPop Demon Hunters provides a uniquely global perspective on the K-Pop phenomenon – a fact rooted in Kang’s own dual Korean-American upbringing. “I was born in Korea but moved to Canada when I was five so I got an equal education on both Korean and North American pop culture,” Kang tells Dazed. “I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I do feel like I’m a pretty rare breed. There’s nobody who has had this much story training in feature animation that is dual culture, and I think that helped the global appeal of the film.” 

Indeed, co-director Appelhans goes so far as to describe the film as something totally new. It’s bold on both fronts: unafraid to throw in Korean words undigested, KPop Demon Hunters presents a rich depiction of Korean culture to international audiences, while also confronting K-Pop’s hyper-sanitised aesthetics with a directness rarely seen in depictions of the industry.

With such earnest subject matter, it’s not surprising that the film’s fictional fandoms have spilt out into the real world. KPop Demon Hunters has not only made IRL stars out of Huntr/x’s EJAE, Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna, but also Kang and Appelhans, who expressed surprise at receiving an idols’ welcome during a recent trip to South Korea. Elsewhere, the duo point out a certain poetic justice in how a film about the healing power of music has also united fans around the world.

Still, beneath the celebrity, Appelhans insists on framing the film’s legacy in personal terms. “The original IP is personal,” he explains. “We made the movie that we wanted to see, with the story and characters that we love and without any enormous expectations. That’s translated so wonderfully that, whatever chapters come after this, we have to live by that philosophy of, ‘What does this story mean to us? Is this something that feels new?’” 

Below, directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans further unpack the personal stories that gave way to KPop Demon Hunters’ spectacular success, as well as addressing swirling rumours surrounding an upcoming sequel.

Congratulations on the release. Did you expect it would be so successful?

Kang: We knew we had a really good movie – we liked it! We were confident that the K-pop fans would like it because we thought the music was really strong. But I don’t think you could predict this [level of success] for anything.

Do you think timing played into this success?

Kang: Honestly, I had hoped that we would release this earlier. It took seven years for me, and I kept telling Chris we would be done in five. He was like, ‘No, no we’re not’. He was right. It was a hard movie to put together, we didn’t stop writing until the scenes were locked and we couldn’t record anymore. It was tough. I think we got lucky because even [seven years ago], we didn’t know if K-pop was at its peak and going to plateau, or even decline. The movie was pitched around the height of BTS’s success, so there was still an uncertainty around whether K-pop could be sustainable.

Also, some of the songs were written more than a year before we released the movie, and you don’t ever do that with pop songs. That was shocking for our pop writers, they were like, ‘We don’t know what’s going to be trendy in a year!’ We just focused on what we liked. The songs serve such a purpose within the story and they’re rooted in the characters, so that also helps them become kind of timeless.

Appelhans: We wanted to do a bunch of stuff that we hadn’t seen in animation before. Fortunately, the audience has been like, ’Thank you, this is the new thing we wanted’. You just never know when it’s new, there’s no way to predict how it will land. 

How did the film change during those seven years?

Kang: It was always a K-pop thing, presented as a non-traditional musical in which characters would burst into song because they’re naturally singers anyway. The story didn’t change that much from the first draft. We added some scenes and created more connective tissue, but the story didn’t really change.

And you guys were involved in the songwriting, too, right?

Kang: Yes, just as much as we were writing story, we were writing the songs.

Appelhans: We worked with our executive music producer, Ian Eisendrath, who comes from Broadway. We’d have the scene and then we would dig in and create these very detailed documents, like we were writing a scene, not in a pop-lyric way. What does this part mean? What’s being expressed? What does Mira feel? It’s the same, torturous process as writing a screenplay. 

All three of the singers, as well as you, Maggie, are Korean-American. Do you think that added something to the film?

Kang: Definitely, I’m very dual-culture, and would identify as Korean first, even though I didn’t live there for a long time. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about this, but, when I would write the characters, I would write in Korean and then translate it into English. I wanted the characters to feel Korean. 

Appelhans: Sometimes she would send me pages and there’d be this turn of phrase…

Kang: …like, ‘I slept on silk sheets with my belly full every night’, and Chris would be like, ‘This is the most Korean thing ever!’ 

There’s also a surprising amount of Korean lyrics in there.

Kang: I love the songs but I do wish I had fought harder for more Korean lyrics.

Is there anything you regret not being able to include?

Kang: Honestly, not really. There’s some fan theory that there’s a three-hour cut of the movie, but we don’t do that. It was hard enough having a 90-minute cut. Even if we had five or ten more minutes, I don’t think we would have added more. This was exactly the movie we needed to craft. 

So, looking into the future, there are a lot of rumours about the sequels.

Appelhans: A lot of unofficial reports. There’s nothing official. We’ve just been trying to enjoy this, it feels like it’s been a year since the film came out, but it’s only been three months. 

Kang: We haven’t had any break! We joke about the scene where Huntr/x are like, ‘Couch, couch, couch!’ But we do need to do our jobs, I guess…

Has it been intense suddenly finding yourself in the K-pop world, with all the fandoms? 

Kang: Oh my gosh, yes! I went up on stage, and they were chanting my name in Korea like I was an idol. I’ve had people cry when they come up to me.

Appelhans: We were living that idol life in Korea! We did some visits to animation schools. When we went to Gobelins [animation school] in Paris it was like a concert, as if we were the Beatles or something! It’s really neat. People love the characters so much that they just want to transfer it to somebody.