On with Kara Swisher - The Story Behind Netflix’s Most Popular Film Ever

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters” wasn’t just one of the biggest movies of 2025; it was Netflix’s most popular title — movie or show — ever. Four songs from the film’s soundtrack also simultaneously cracked the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list, a first for a movie soundtrack. Now, it’s up for two Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards: Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.  For directors Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang, the megahit is also a celebration of Korean culture. Kara, Chris and Maggie talk about the ways Maggie drew on her Korean heritage to expand the scope of the film, why the hit song “Golden” was so hard to write, and how they were able to make an original film at a time when studios are mostly looking to recycle IP. They also talk about the future of the animation industry amid the threat of A.I. and what’s in store for the much anticipated “KPop Demon Hunters” sequel.  Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kara, how do we get Scott to watch it? I don't know. Tell him everyone's hot. That'll work, right? Because everyone's hot. So watch it, Galloway. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. We today are going up, up, up. It goes without saying that K-pop demon hunters is a major win for Hollywood in an otherwise disappointing year. But I don't think many people

fully realize what a cultural and critical juggernaut the animated film is and continues to be. K-pop Demon Hunters is Netflix's most popular title ever, meaning movie or show, with around a half a billion views. Four songs from the film cracked the top 10 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart at the same time, the first time that's ever happened for a movie soundtrack. The film's lead song, which I just referenced, Golden, spent eight weeks at the top of the charts. It was the first number one hit for any K-pop girl group, real, animated. On top of that, the movie won awards at the Grammys, the Golden Globes, and the

Critics' Choice Awards. Now, it's up for two Academy Awards at next month's Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. If they don't win both, I am going to storm the Oscars. My guest today are the film's two directors, Chris Applehands and Maggie Kang. For Maggie, K-pop Demon Hunters also happens to be her directorial debut of a movie she conceived. For a few people who still haven't seen the movie, Scott Galloway, the plot centers on a K-pop girl group called Huntrix. The trio are megastars, but that's just their day job. Their real job is to do battle with a shadowy underworld of demons looking to attack their fans in the form of a rival boy band, the Saja Boys. Oh, the Saja Boys. There's so many reasons K-pop Demon Hunters has become a

massive hat, but it's very hard. It isn't just a story. It's a really great story of people overcoming odds. And that is a common thing through many stories. Not all of them do it as beautifully as they do with the music and the animation is gorgeous. I think the message that Hollywood should take away from their success is that originality and creativity still went out over everything else. And the endless amount of sequels, the endless amount of brain-dead AI crap that they're going to throw at us does not take the place of a great story. And let me say, my kids love this movie. it is supplanted in my home, Frozen and Moana rather significantly. All right, let's get to my interview with Maggie and Chris.

I'm very excited about this as a parent and as someone who loved the movie as a person. We have some special expert questions today from my two kids, Clara and Solomon, who are huge fans of the movies. They're so excited I'm doing this. They're totally uninterested in my podcast career, but they're totally interested in this. So stick around, get ready to have Golden stuck in your head for the rest of the day. you'll be lucky for it. It's a wonderful song.

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I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is Love. A show about the surprising things that love can make us do. 100 episodes available now on This Is Love. Chris Appelhands and Maggie Kang, thanks for coming on on, and congratulations on the film's two Oscar nominations. Thank you. Thank you. So I want to talk about a lot of stuff, especially the business, but it's been a wild few

months for the two of you, and you're about to cap it all off by heading, as I said, to the Academy Awards next month. I know you've talked about this, but reflect on the film's monster success. There's no way anybody expected this. I've talked to people from Netflix. They certainly didn't. But first Maggie and then Chris. Yeah, I mean, you know,

you can't really predict anything like this. But I do think that we were very confident with what we had. We really loved the film when we finished it and loved it all the way through from the very beginning. And really, you know, had high hopes that an audience would find it. And if they did, that they would love it. bit just as much as we did. And luckily it did. And I think we're still as a business trying to figure out how this new generation of audience is absorbing content. And to have a movie like this

land on a platform like Netflix where you're able to go global instantly. You're in like 98 countries. It's dubbed in like 40-something languages. And the power of that is kind of undeniable. And there's nothing really like it. And then this movie just kind of was carried by the fans. They found it immediately. And it wasn't a large group of people that found it, but when they found it, the passion for it was just so intense.

They were creating content for Instagram and socials almost immediately. I remember watching it on midnight. And it was just, as I was watching, there was content being created. So there's like this power. of this generation that is content creators that is able to spread the word. Spread the word. It's not that. They actually are taking your content and then working with it.

So go ahead. Chris, next. No, I mean, those were the big epiphanies. I think the fact that I guess we really wanted to make something new. And I think, again, as audiences telling business, like, we would like that. We would like new stuff. We matched up influences from manga and anime and K-dramas and current. Rissawa and really tried to make something that we wanted to see in animation that hadn't been seen before.

And I think it's just become the recurring theme of all audiences that they are hungry for that. They're so hungry for original things. Right, original. Yeah, that dovetails with the power of word of mouth. I think it's really the marketing of word of mouth is as powerful as any formal campaign. And you'd see that on TikTok. That was really interesting. Like there'd be a fan-made homage video, you know, about one of the throughlines in the story.

And it would have a trillion likes and a bunch of great comments. And then there would be one even put out by Netflix, like a nicely done version. But just the fact that it was coming from sort of the corporate account, there was a different relationship to it. It was a more skepticism. When it's made by a fan saying, this is why I love this movie and this is me putting my own time and energy into it. that has its own form of appeal in this age of marketing saturation that I think is kind of amazing. So direct to streaming was a good thing for you as opposed to a theatrical release first, Maggie? You know, I think so. When we got the green light, it was during COVID times. So everything was

unsure anyway. And, you know, just the idea of theaters. So especially for me, being a first-time director, being able to create something, I get something made that's original in this. climate where originals are not really made. It was just, yeah, let's do this. Let's just make a movie. I was just grateful for that opportunity. And our movie was different because it came out. It struck success with an audience.

And then we had a theatrical for a weekend. So I think we're trying to figure out, like, there's different ways that different films, you know, need, like just, you know, where they land. And maybe that's what we're learning. as an industry, like how to get these things out there. I do think people, the reason it worked so well in the theater is later is because people watched it, loved it,

and then wanted to experience it with people. Yes. Right? It was a totally different experience. It was like going to a concert and experiencing the movie, like how music is experienced in the film, which was, I mean, I can't imagine going to a theater and watching my film with an audience who hasn't seen it.

Right, right. I feel like that would be terrifying. But this was a great experience because you're like, oh, wow, people love this. And it's community, and they're going there to enjoy it on a different level. And they want to meet each other. Yes. We had a similar experience with a pivot tour. They could care less about us.

They wanted to see each other and talk about us, which was great. But go ahead, Chris. I think what I realized, that the theatrical showings was like, there is, I think, a desire. And I'm an agnostic person. I don't go to church. I never did. There's a real desire, I think, culture. for collective experiences of which concerts are and stories are.

It's a kind of reason to gather and celebrate, especially with the story too. There's often a value statement that you're sharing in and celebrating. And I feel like that it occurred to me being in the theater and enjoying the movie in this kind of almost euphoric state that that's something that I think we're really drawn to as humans. And at least for me as a sort of non-church-courge. person. I was like, I really love this feeling of being connected by a story and connected by music. And I think it's, there's a shortage of it in our present day. And I wonder if that's part

of why movies mean as much as they do to us. And we seek them out. Or they can, right? Or they can, yeah. Or they can't. So for people that are on the broad plot, you have this K-pop girl group Huntrix. It's three members at this point, Rumi Zoe and Mira. They're the latest demon-hunting trio in a long line of them. But the spoiler, Rumi is part demon herself and her friends don't know. Through that, you're exploring themes of self-acceptance and overcoming cultural pressures. These are really heavy themes that the movie doesn't feel heavy. Let's talk about striking that balance because, you know, as, let me tell you as a gay person, I heard gay. Like, I think anyone who feels other has that feeling of fear of being found. I'd love

each of you to talk about that, Maggie, first. Yeah, you know, we talked about that kind of story a lot, and in so many different things. We talked a lot about addiction. We talked a lot about yes, being kind of the other, like immigrant story.

And we wanted to challenge ourselves with the storytelling. The way that Chris and I bonded as storytellers first is through our love of director of Bong Joon's films, especially the host. In that film, I remember the first time watching it, I was blown away at how he was able to just juggle different tones.

There's a scene where the family is grieving the loss of a child and they're crying. And then the next moment, it just becomes this like physical comedy thing where one brother like jump kicks another one and they fall to the ground and they're like crying and just in this deep sorrow. But it's very comical. And I had no idea that that could work. but it did. And so, and director Park Chinook does that as well in his films. And so we wanted to try that with this.

And because, especially because we were dealing with very dark themes. And one of the scenes that we really like, and it actually came later because we felt like, and this is the couch, couch, couch scene, very early in the movie. And, you know, we were about to get into Rumi's backstory

of being part demon and this kind of burden that she has, this dark secret that she's keeping from her friends. And because we were going right into that, we wanted to kind of show the audience, like, what is Rumi fighting for? What are we, what do we want for Rumi? And it's this kind of silliness,

this being able to be silly with her girlfriends and just that intimacy. That's the thing that she really, really wants and what we want for her. And so we added the scene where Rumi is coming up from the couch with a silly face and offering up the costumes for the new single. And that was our way of kind of playing with tone.

Let's keep it light, but also be dramatic on the other side. And I'm a true believer of like, I love comedy, but I also feel like the more comic you can go on one end, the more dramatic you can go on the other end. So we've always tried to strike that balance in this movie. Yeah. Chris? Yeah, I think that speaks very much.

much to my favorite quote about movies, which is Truffaut saying a great movie is truth and spectacle. And I feel like that was part of our strategy really is the words K-Pab Dima hunters say, like, obviously invite the spectacle is so obvious and sort of fun. And you're doing that and you're just going a thousand miles an hour and you're entertaining and being funny and glamorous. And then hopefully planting seeds for the audience that are going to pay off later that But don't feel like homework and don't feel, you know, pedantic or anything. I grew up in a in a small town in Idaho, and I had several friends who, to keep it vague,

they were in the closet and they were part of Mormon families. And they went through a very similar experience to Rumi in terms of, you know, basically realizing fundamentally they had to survive. the experience of being told that the way you are is not worthy of love. That's such an incredible thing. And it was odd because they had loving parents in a lot of ways. But that love was, at the very end of the day, it was conditional. And so I watched them in their early 20s.

They both went right up to the edge, just like Rumi does, of thinking the best thing would be not to exist anymore. And then I think what I really admire about them is that they came to terms with the fact that they were never going to get the love they deserved there. And they went out and found it somewhere else. And that's what Rumi does. Yeah, that's often the case. And then everyone goes to the Book of Mormon and laughs. Exactly.

Yeah. There's a lot of Mormons go to that show, just so you know. So the song Golden is as much of a success as the film itself. It's up for Best Original Song in the upcoming Academy Awards. Maggie, an interview last fall, you said Golden was the last track you figured out and it was very hard to write. You didn't know what the song needed to be to serve the story. So talk about what was the key to unlock it and how did you figure it out? Yeah.

You know, through the writing process and just developing the film, we got a lot of feedback from, especially from the studio, that, you know, we need to know more about the characters in order to really be on the journey with them. And it's funny because we were like, oh, well, we know, but we realize, well, the audience doesn't know. And so we need to, like, give them a little bit of each of their origin story, where they come from. And because the movie is a non-origin story, and we were very adamant about telling a non-origin story, we had to kind of feed the audience a little bit of information here and there through flashbacks and such. And because the first act is so tight, we really couldn't find, places to do that. We tried scenes where the girls meet on the island to train as youngsters. And it's just, the movie just kept rejecting it. It just didn't want those scenes. And so,

writing the Golden Song, I think what really kind of unlocked it for us is, we also, we were not convinced that we were making a musical for a very long time, but finally realized through our executive music producer Ian Eisen Drak, who comes from working on Broadway shows and has a very great, like, just writing sense through music. And he's like, you guys need an I-Want song. Every Disney princess movie has one. And we realized that we did.

And so Golden became that. But then we realized that through the song, we could also just sprinkle in a little bit of the backstory of the girls. And so... Rather than show it. Rather than show it. Yes. Which you have.

Did you make those? Yes, we did cuts with story boards, but we never fully produced them. And so we would make these, with every song, we would make these very long, very dry, just, you know, literal documents for our songwriters. And we would write, you know, with Mira. She comes from a family, a lot of, you know, like an educated background. But she's kind of this black sheep of the family. She's different from the rest of them. She's wild.

She's spontaneous. She can be aggressive. And that kind of paragraph is paired down to, what is it? I was wild. I was a problem child because I got too wild. Got too wild. And now that's how I'm getting paid. And it becomes this pop lyric that is universal,

but also services the story and the characters that are into film. Now, Chris, during a Reddit AMA, you said Golden had some surprising influence. In addition to K-pop, it was also inspired by Juicy by Notorious BIG and Forever by Drake, Eminem, and others. Talk about incorporating the, I think, because people could see this as a children's movie. It absolutely is, but it isn't at the same time. Yeah, I think we certainly never thought about it as a children's movie, and we sort of wanted to be as dense and smart as a movie that we would want to watch.

But I think that, yeah, the musical influence, were a real joy to find because part of the thing that hadn't been done before is what Maggie described, which is this blend of very tight and efficient storytelling within the song, but a song that was truly a pop song, not like, because there have been some Broadway songs with pop stylings, but they're still essentially Broadway. And so like Juicy or there was a Drake collab called Forever, is essentially I started as a nobody and I worked my way to the top and I'm still climbing. And that's such a, in the case of all those songs, like with Biggie, it's like, it's very specific. He's like literally talking about Christmas missed us.

Like it really describes a person who is in a difficult place in life and it encapsulates their struggle. And yet it's so universal that like people all over the world connected to that. So we really took that as an archetype of like, this is K-pop, this is about these fantasy girl characters, but really it's the same archetype of like, here are these three young women. And the pivotal, emotional thing that that song helps you understand about that is they don't really have anywhere else to go but each other. They don't have happy families and safe places. And so their journey in this movie to figure out how to find themselves and be the best versions of them, they only have each other. And that really helps you buy in at the same time that,

as far as you can tell, you're just hearing like a fun pop song. So it was that mashup that was so fun. It absolutely doesn't sound like a Disney movie. Trust me. It's not. I've watched thousands of them. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Quince. Style doesn't come from chasing new trends every season. Real style comes from slowly and intentionally cultivating a wardrobe filled with high quality staples that will last. And if you're on the lookout, for a perfect addition in your closet, look no further than Quince. You'll find organic cotton sweaters, polos for every occasion, light jackets that will help keep you warm as the seasons change year after year, not to mention their famous 100% Mongolian Kashmir. If there's anything better

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Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join deleteme.com slash Kara and use the promo code Kara at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join deleteme.com slash Kara and enter the code Kara at checkout. That's K-A-R-A. That's join deleteme.com slash Kara code Kera. I took a little bit about the Korean influences in the film. I just got back from Korea. I was there 10 days. And I have to say it's not as big. I asked Koreans, I'm like, what do you think of that movie?

They're like, what, and I was like, no, no, no. This is like the biggest thing across the entire world, which was interesting. But there's enormous Korean influences here. Maggie, you came up with the idea for K-pop Demon Hunters. It's also your directorial debut, as we discussed. You said when you were pitching the film, you wanted to, quote, make it as Korean as possible in order to showcase the culture from ancient shamanism. to modern K-pop and a lot to pack into movie. Talk about translating your Korean heritage into an animated kids film.

And where did you start? A lot of people are under the impression it's from Korea, just so, you know. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's not. It's Canadian-American, essentially. Yes, yes. Well, I've always just wanted to work on a culturally Korean movie ever since I started in this business and I was kind of waiting around for when

and I never came across one and once I got into the position of being able to kind of craft it and lead something like this, I decided, well, shoot, I'll do it. And so that's where I started and landed on kind of demonology and the idea of demon hunters and

K-pop was another Korean element that I could add in. And it felt really exciting. And I had no idea, out where it was going to take me. And I was trying to figure it out, figure out kind of the concept of it. And then when Chris joined, he suggested, you know,

rooting the mythology into this mudang. And mudang is kind of, I don't know, they're kind of seen as like gypsies and outsiders. And so I, initially when we pitched the idea to a lot of Korean people, they were a little like, oh, that's a little strange. And so I was a little reluctant to go for it. but, you know, it just felt like the most perfect idea to root the mythology into something that existed in culture.

So just decided to go for it. And for me, that decision really opened up just the possibility of being, you know, an opportunity to show the different eras of Korea, how music evolved through the ages and through that the different fashions. and just getting very culturally specific about the different areas and everything. And that's what really told me like, oh, this could be the most Korean thing ever. And so through every aspect, we try to infuse Korean culture. And it's like if you were making a sci-fi movie, everything is kind of seen through a sci-fi lens. And we just did that through a Korean lens. And so when they're having dinner, the dinner table would be filled with

Korean food, the way it's, the place setting is, or a building or any sort of location, even the costumes, the way their makeup is done, we looked at a lot of Korean-specific makeup tutorials. Yeah. Because it's very different and specific. It is. Well, you nailed it, I have to say, especially at the concerts, right? I was in Korea, there was a concert happening, and I was like, this looks like K-pop demon

hunters. I was walking through the crowd. and even the snacks. I thought you did an excellent job on the snacks, by the way, that they were having. Now, Chris, I don't know if you know this, but you're a white American. You're married to a Korean-American author. But the only other film you directed is Wish Dragon, it's set in China. You actually lived there a little bit during the development.

You came on this project a little more than a year into development. What did you see your role was of telling this story? Yeah. It's tied to two big. ingredients that I fell in love with instantly. I was in the middle. I had WishDragon had done really well on Netflix. So Sony was like, let's make another movie together.

And I was really excited and had all my ideas. And then my producer introduced me to Maggie and we had lunch. And like literally 10 minutes into lunch, I was playing very cool. Too cool. Did it work, Maggie? Yeah, too cool. I didn't think he was interested at all. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And inside every other idea for a movie that I had been cooking up just flew out of my mind, and this was all I could think about. And I think it's based in two things. One, I'm a musician my whole life. I've been writing music and songs probably longer than I've been writing screenplays. So the sort of proposal that I floated to Maggie was like, what could this movie among all the things that it's about be about the power of music

and the way that that transcends all our usual barriers and connects us in a way that just even words and logic can. And Maggie's like a true, like an OG K-pop fan, so she's been singing karaoke to this stuff for 35 years. So she has a lived experience of that. And I think we bonded really fast on that mission of like, let's find a way to dramatize and make music into a kind of superpower in its own way. And the second one was my wife, who's a Korean-American novelist. And she's one of the first, her name's Maureen Gu. She's one of the first Korean-American writers.

to kind of break out in young adult books. And she is a very funny, smart, food-loving, angry, vengeful, fashion-obsessed person. And when I was having lunch with Maggie, Maggie was like, I want to make a film about these girls that are angry and funny and thirsty and food-loving and fashion-obsessed. And I said, I know it's really weird coming from this, like, the whitest person you could imagine. But I know exactly what you mean. and I want to help you bring those characters to life because I'm married to one,

and she's so much more interesting than the characters I see in animation. And so I think that those two things really bonded us and the movie so much the result of those two things trying to reconcile and work together and balance. Wait, Maggie, if you thought he wasn't interested, how'd the next step go? I think I was, I tried to play cool,

but then I immediately called everyone as like, please, please, please, please, I want to do this movie. I think you played a cool for most of the hour, and then at the end he showed excitement. He revealed his demon ways. All right, so every episode we get a question from an outside expert. You're going to have to indulge me. This one is a special one.

I'm Solomon's wish of cats, and I'm four years old. Oh, my gosh. Well, Maggie, from a B'Bunzi movie, explain what he's referring to because those were fantastic characters to add. Talk about their significance. Well, we always wanted a tiger in the movie because the tiger is the national animal of Korea. And we didn't really want to just slap on an animal sidekick character. We wanted it to have a role.

And we realized that we needed a way for Gino and Rumi to communicate with each other, send notes. And it felt a little weird for Gino being 400 years old to just send a text message on a phone. So one of our production designers, Helen Chen, did this beautiful painting of Gino with this cat, like a statue that was turning into a real tiger. And that automatically made him more attractive because he's a man with a pet, with a cat. And we're all cat people on this crew. And so we decided to make him like this mailbox. this messenger with sending notes to each other.

And so that's how Derpy the tiger is born. And the reason why we call him Derpy is because we would, as a crew, just send these kind of illustrations of tigers to each other. And they were all kind of wall-eyed and wonky-eyed. And we used to send them to each other and say, like, look at this Derpy one, or this one's more Derpy. And so that name just kind of stuck. And in traditional,

illustration, the tiger is meant to be, like, to represent the wealthy or the politicians. And so that's why they were wall-eyed and wonky. And the magpie is the commoner that's always pecking at his head. And so we needed the magpie as well. And I think we just gave it three eyes because it just made it more demon. Yes, more demon. That's what it was. Initially, my kids, and it's scary, but then it's not.

Then it's adorable, which is interesting because the tiger has very sharp teeth and looks in and the magpie with the three eyes is fucked up in some way. But then it seems to work. And it's interesting because there are always sidekick animals in movies. This took it to another level, I thought. Oh, thank you. And that's why I think he thinks it's real and wants one. The animation style also feels very unique.

It's a mix of 3D CGI animation style used in big Western studios like Disney Pixar. But then there are these bursts of very clearly steeped in 2D Eastern anime style. Chris, talk about blending these two-dist. distinctiles and what were the conversations you two had when it came to deciding how to mix them? Yeah, I think it goes back to like Bongchino. It goes back. There's actually a real shared DNA, I think, between like the tonal range of his filmmaking from comedy and horror and deep emotion all right next to each other.

K-dramas, Korean dramas, they're excellent at doing similar. There's a famous early anime called Cowboy Bebop, which is a great, very much not for kids, kind of space noir series, and it has these bounty hunters that are really, really cool and violent, but also really goofy and weird and silly. And those were, and then Sailor Moon, which is another early anime, which had these aspirational sort of superhero princesses that are also really silly. So in all of that was the shared DNA of like wanting our characters to be able to go through some real genuine, deep, heavy stuff and also be really goofy and, and and expressive in ways that we felt like were unique to those influences.

And so it really became, really who the characters were and the tone we wanted to achieve with them, drove all the decisions from designing the characters to the animation style to even how we chose to light them. So it was almost like from the inside out that the visual style is a product of the range we wanted out of the characters, if that makes sense. We'll be back at a minute. Support for On with Kara Swisher comes from Indeed. Right now, there's a talented person out in the world who could help take your business to the next level. But finding that person doesn't need to be a grind. Just use Indeed sponsored jobs.

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I like to teach my kids how to use their money and spend it well, but also how to invest it. I certainly would use Acorns in a future, but it's particularly good for younger people who don't know a lot about investment. And that's the great thing about Acorns. It grows with you. Sign up now, and Acorns will boost your new. account with a $5 bonus investment. Join over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $27 billion with Acorns. Head to Acorns.com slash Kara or download the Acorns app

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to join. Text Cara to 511-5-11 or go to f-FRF.RF.U.S.S. slash New Year. That's Kara to 511-5-Eleven and help protect the country that belongs to all of us. Text fees may apply. Let's talk about the business side of making the film. Maggie, one of the challenges you say you faced is when you were pitching the film, you didn't have any comparables to point to to get studios on board. Talk about pitching the film and how you convince people to stick with your vision at a time when the industry is facing as you noted, a ton of pressure to do guaranteed hits. I did an interview with Ted Sarandos who runs Netflix a couple years ago where he said, there's only to be big hits or very little movies,

nothing in the middle, right? He literally said, you're all done. Yeah. So the movie was literally pitched as a K-pop girl group who Moonlight as Demon Hunters. That was the pitch. And then I think about six months into development, Christine Belson, the president of Sony Pictures Animation,

who is, she just has... very good taste and really leads Sony in a way where it's they want to encourage different type of films and different kind of it really pushed the envelope and tell the audience especially with the North American audience animation is not for children as a medium for any storytelling and so she sat us down and said guys I think this is a bigger movie and that's when we were started to look for a partner for me and we found Chris and I think I think, I don't know, it's hard. A lot of my director friends ask me,

how did you pull this off? How did you get away with so much in this film? And I think it's because Christine was just such a huge champion of this from the beginning. And it was not only Christine, but also Spring Asper's, the president of Sony music. She saw such huge potential in this just from the music standpoint. And they were just supportive in making this thing not kiddie, not for children, just making it a bit more adult. We always called it like a hard PG-12.

And one of the things Christine also told us, too, is she said, you know, let's objectify the crap out of these guys. Because we've never seen that before. And so, you know, we got tasks. Finally. We got tasks from the top. So we stuck to that. That's my son's favorite demons, the abs guy.

My young daughter, who's nine now, but she said, he's weird. I was like, That's funny. And Chris, even once production started, the movie wasn't conceived as a big budget film, but ultimately it cost about $100 million to make, even though you said the original plan was for a budget of about a quarter of the size. So Chris, when it gets to that number, obviously that's where the shove comes in movies,

I know, from many friends of mine who are involved. Yeah, I think one advantage we had is that the initial green light pitch was quite, it was really ambitious. We're like, this is a movie that's about musical superheroes and it has original pop songs and they're all going to be legitimately great. And like we kind of described a movie as it has evolved, which is nine out of ten on the difficulty scale, 10 out of 10. But I think the promise of it was big enough that I think studios were like, well, if we're going to do this, we have to do it at a really high level and spend $100 million. And I think the other thing, I don't know, I think we had this conviction, which I find, I guess, a little frustrating to me that there's not more conviction in the studio system, which is the fact that this is Korean, that it's an original idea that is filled with crazy ideas, is a real asset. I like to say that this way, the rest of the world has been watching, you know, American Westerns for 100.

hundred years. And none of those people have ever been to Wyoming, and they don't know what a horse saddle gear is. But they figure it out. It's like they travel and they connect to the core human story that's being told. So we pitched this spectacular movie, but we also pitched all the things about shame and identity. And so having those two things in the oven, I think made it, I think it made it able to reach

big audience. and it also gave the studio a sense that this could be working on these two levels. But how do you get that? Maggie, this is your directorial debut. Chris, you had one other film under your belt. You talked about wanting to make something new, but that hasn't happening.

I talked to really well-known filmmakers that have had lots of successes. And what has to change to get these original movies made? And I will note that the two movies, besides K-pop Demon Hunters, in the theatrical, was weapons and sinners, which are original movies, right? not the retreads didn't do as well.

So what needs to change others can get the original movies made, each of you just briefly? I mean, I think the successes like we've had this year will help because it's like proof of concept that audiences want this stuff. And then I think it's, you know, one of the hardest things,

especially in animation, is to hold your courage because it goes long. It takes, in this case, six, seven years. And there are many opportunities within that to chicken out or to back down on the initial guts of the movie. So I think you need, as Maggie said, you need the support like we had with Christine

of somebody who on the studio level will go to Batford and be like, I'm advocating for this thing, even though it's different and weird and not something you've seen before, that is its strength. And I think if you have that, I don't know, it takes some courage.

Which is rare. And it's a personal, I think that's the best way to explain. It's like that conviction that Christine had was not driven by books about screenwriting or data about who wanted what. It was her own personal conviction that she was, I'm moved by this, it's funny, I love the music, I love the story, and that you need people to act like humans in those roles and not just data

analysis. But it certainly can go the other way. Look, Heated rivalry was rejected by everybody and idiotically because it was, sorry to say, a group of a certain kind of man who was like, why would I want gay? When, in fact, there was a huge fan base around that book series. which they wouldn't have known about. Maggie, what do you think about this? It's scary.

It's just scary to make these things. And I think I was scared so much, so many times making this movie and doing the comedy that we were doing, doing the drama that we were doing. But I think you just have to kind of push forward with that. And it's, I don't know. I also think studios need to realize that,

I think, especially with animation, because the budgets are so big, they tend to kind of, want to appeal to everybody, and when you do that, you appeal to no one. Right. And so something like he did a rivalry, it's a very targeted, and for me, it was like Canadian, a gay love story, I'm in. Like, that was, it felt like it was made for me.

And, but then it was made for people who were not both of those things. Right, exactly, who weren't fans or romantic, no. Yes, like how the success of our movie came to be. The core K-pop audience really embraced it. They talked about it endlessly on social media. And when you get the core audience that you are appealing to, then it can go outward. I would argue one of the big things was the story, right? And you both have backgrounds as story artists.

And the experience presumably was helpful. Can you explain what a story artist does and why that would be, Maggie, go ahead. Oh, how much time do we have? No, no. So a story artist, as a story artist, you are kind of given assignments. It could be a moment in the movie. It could be an entire scene or a sequence. And it's your job to create images that will kind of tell the story of the scene.

And we create what's called storyboards. And for a sequence, it's anywhere between 100 to 500, if it's an action sequence. And you draw the movie the way you were kind of imagining it in your head in drawings. And so you are the first person to kind of determine what shot would. would go for that line of dialogue or that moment, the acting that the character does. And a lot of times the story artist is also writing the scene. So you're coming up with moments, dialogue, jokes. And then we take those drawings and we edit them.

We have a picture editor. And we lay in temp soundtracks, temp voices, temp sound effects. And we watched the entire movie in that form over and over, doing iterations on that before it starts to move down to pipeline and become digital. You've said your background as the story has helped you keep control

during the film's production. Was there a time when you felt you're at risk for losing control of the movie, and how did you rein it back in? A lot of dark times. It's interesting. There's a cut of the movie where we were getting a lot of feedback and we were addressing

a lot of the notes and stuff. that we were getting. And we screened it to a big live audience in Orange County, I think like 200 people. And it was, you know, it was okay. It wasn't like, it wasn't awful. They people, they still liked it. And I think our score was maybe like six out of ten or seven. And afterwards, I asked Chris, like, did you like, did you like that movie? And he's like, no. And I was like, I didn't like it either. And we thought, you know, from that moment, we just decided, we're going to make something, whether we sink or swim, we'll put something out that we love and we believe in. And if people don't like it, at least we know.

Yeah. You know, we did our part, and it's what we wanted the movie to be. And so, yeah, like, that really told us that we just needed to rein things back to the way that we wanted and tell the story that we needed to tell. Right. So one of the things, though, Chris, in a recent interview, you talked about how one of the challenges facing the animation world was how training opportunities. have disappeared. You both lean heavily on your decades of experience, writing, creating stories

while making the film. Talk about missing opportunities, what's lost, and especially because the other big existential threat for animation is AI, right? And a lot of it's slop. It's not always going to be slow. I keep telling that to Hollywood. They're like, oh, it's slop. I'm like, not forever, my friends. Chris, talk about this. How will the animation issue change over the next few years or making of movies more broadly, especially with AI, and the idea that people aren't trained anymore. Same thing that happens in journalism, by the way. Interesting.

Yeah, I think it's a great parallel with journalism because what you see, and you would speak to this better than me, but there are centuries of institutional knowledge built up in terms of principles of how you operate as a journalism with the goal of producing good journalism, which contains the truth, hopefully, basically. And as you lose that, you have people partaking in journalism who don't have that education.

They don't even know the mistakes they're making. They don't even realize the responsibilities that they have in their craft. And I think in animation, one of the struggles we've had is as it's gotten more decentralized and a lot of the big studios have become scattered around the world in terms of talent everywhere, which is, there's great upsides to that. But the experience of storyboarding a sequence and the tradition in animation as you with storyboard, board a sequence, and then you would pitch it live to a room of other story artists. So you'd get up there. It's the closest thing to really performing the movie. You're doing voices. You're seeing if your jokes land.

You're pacing, you're seeing to make sure it's keeping people hooked and not dragging. It's like a mini edit of the film. But you're also trying out jokes, so you're kind of a stand-up comic. Yeah. You're essentially, it's the wind tunnel. You're building your little prototype and you put it in the wind tunnel and you see what kind of shit falls off. And then you're like, yeah, revise, revise. And so that culture of artists doing that has kind of gotten lost. It's a lot more remote now. And the artists, young story artists are very talented, but a lot of them don't have that. What I would consider kind of a ruthless sense of how I'm using the audience's time, how I'm using this one minute, which will cost a million dollars to produce.

And so Maggie and I come from a background, like we got a lot of training at DreamWorks that really was like, better make sure whatever you're doing, drama or comedy or something in between, that you are making use of this time. And I think that we really bonded as writers about that. And it ties to the second half of your question, which is, if your writing is purposeful, then you have a chance for your performance to be purposeful and you're seen to be purposeful. And all of that gets formed out to individual artists and they all have to contribute. And it takes. takes decades of experience for each of those departments to deliver, let's say, a character design, a 3D model of rig, which is the invisible bones that move the animation, so you can actually move your character. All of those are people who've spent 10 or 12 years mastering those skills. So you have this chain of artistic experience, and all of them are asking the same

question, which is like, what is this moment about? Why are we doing this shot? Why are we doing this scene? So I think that... That's difficult. The tools, yeah, the tools of AI are going to evolve and they're going to replace in a certain way, but I think it's still always going to go back to that intention of the storyteller and the artist. Though certainly could, you know, I think, I do think Hollywood's lying to itself all the time, because I think studios are using it a lot more, and I think screenwriters are using it a lot more than they pretend they are. So, Maggie, whether artists or actors like it or not, AI is here, Disney announced last year it's investing a billion dollars in open-hand license characters to,

Open AIs video platform, SORA, a lot of pressure to cut costs, obviously. Do you think about it all? Because I think what's special about this movie, even though you use tons of technology, animation has always been at the forefront of technology. Movies have been at the forefront of special effects. Is it a negative or what's the boon that you see, if any? So I've been on the film for seven years. I'm still on the film, I guess.

year eight. And most of that time was spent in writing and not producing the movie that we see now. So there's more work that isn't seen than it is seen. Absolutely. And I think for me, when it comes to AI, it's a tool. And I think that artists and the AI creators are just not talking to each other. And I think that the more that we communicate, we can find ways where these tools can be developed to help. us get to our results quicker.

And I can see places where that can be useful. But my relationship to my film is very complicated. There are times when I've hated it. There's times when I... It's a child that you're raising. And for me, you don't get that with AI. You're not, like, struggling with it and creating it and making it, forcing it into something, having it push back.

there isn't that tension and that relationship that you're getting in the creative process. So it doesn't feel like there's, I don't know, that relationship isn't there. Chris was just talking about this wind tunnel. Yes, it's not going to reflect that ultimately in the product, so it's tricky. Tech people often talk about lack of friction.

They always think that's the best thing. And I'm always like, it ain't. It actually is the worst thing for creativity or even humanity. I just finished a docu-series and I talked to someone about the effect on the human. brain of chatbots. They're frictionless, they're seamless, they're sycophantic. It's easy.

Lack of friction is not a great thing. Yes. And that's what both of you were talking about. So last two questions, very quickly. One is business. Movies now are not just about movies and sales, and you've hit it out of the park on that. Merchandise. I'm curious

why there's no merchandise. I found two keychains in Korea in the airport of the bird and the tiger. and then this. This I just found. Oh, yes. Okay, this is a ramen, spicy noodles with Zoe on it,

because my kids love Zoe. It has Netflix on it. Talk a little bit about this part of the business, because you see frozen, I have frozen mozzarella sticks. Frozen, frozen, frozen mozzarella sticks. Every time I see some frozen thing and I have to buy them, I text Bob Eager and say, fuck you. Like, once again.

But what happened here? because that's a huge business for you, which also helps you make what you want to make. Yes. I think currently they are frantically loading the canon of merch to fire it soon. So there's lots. There's so much lead time involved with that and because the movie was a surprise. But you didn't think you'd need the merch.

Yeah, there was no plan. There's no plan. They didn't know what they were getting, so there was no preparedness to capitalize on it. Right. But it's also one of the things that we've been talking a lot about is just different IPs are different in their, fan base, especially in that core audience and the sense of genuineness. And we feel like our core

audience are older. They're really rooted in K-pop and they're rooted in anime. Of which there's lots of merch, by the way. Yeah, and there's lots of merch there. They're also like, they're different, the frozen audience, which are six-year-olds, you can't create too much merch. You can't oversaturate a six-year-old. Like my son, you know, he could wear F-1 underwear and drive to the six-year-old. You can't create a six-year-old. school in an F1 car and like watch F1. It's not possible. There's no cynicism. There's no like selling out. But with our audience, we feel like it does have to be more careful because, you know, K-pop Demon Hunters' Frozen Fish Filets. I'm not sure that that core audience will turn on them. So yeah, there's more cultivating it. One t-shirt would be nice. Like one. They're there.

We'll get two on care. No, no, I'm teasing you. But it's really, funny because this has now become a big part of entertainment is the whole 360 and I was struck by how little there was no merch right there's tons of Barbie merch. The same thing happened with Star Wars when they released that movie there was no merch. No merch. They were selling empty boxes. Yeah. Now there's too much merch of that. You're right. So naturally speaking of six years, you do have an enormous, you don't know, you've all been to kids parties recently, correct? You can only listen to Taylor Swift and Golden and K-pop team. Just that is it. That's the entire. experience of anyone with children between four and, I would say, adults, everybody.

So naturally, a sequel is already in the works, but Sony Pictures Animation says it may not be ready until 2030, which brings us to our second expert question. This is from my six-year-old daughter, Claire. Is the same K-pop Demon Hunter's going to be in K-pop Demon Hunter too, or is it going to be different hunters? She was very shy. She loves you so, just so you know. She has never met you.

That's a good question. Tell us about the sequel. Different hunters, new hunters, anything you could tell us? Oh, nothing. We should be better at dodging this question by now. We're so bad. We're so bad at it. Honestly, it's been a crazy nine months of...

Yes, I'd imagine. campaigning, et cetera. So it's now we can see it on the horizon and our brains are starting to really dig into it. But I think the nice thing is the first movie was made honestly blessedly devoid of the sort of sense that it needed to be for everybody. And so we made a movie that we love that made sense to us that we felt would resonate with a certain fan base. And I think we just have to follow the same personal approach. And we'll just try to protect it from all of those outside expectations and categories of data and stuff because I don't think it helps all that much.

Oh, you can't. You can't. And don't let them talk to you like that at the Vanity Fair Oscar party afterwards. Maggie, you get, they do that. People do that to me all the time whenever I made me. Let me tell you what you should do next year. I'm like, get the fuck away from me. Move along.

You shall not tell me. get the fuck away from me does a lot of work just so you know Maggie you get the last word on this you don't have to answer that question for her at all but thinking about what's next. Yeah, same. You know, I think this movie was very scary to put out and we put all we got into it and but there's more. There's more.

We can take it further and I think we're going to push it a lot further than we did with this one and it's kind of given me the courage to do that. Yeah. You know, the reception to this. Yeah. Remember, Godfather 2 is the better movie. Yes. We won't speak of Godfather 3.

But Godfather 2 was the classic. And so you never know. Anyway, what a great, an amazing thing you've done here. It's really beautiful. It's actually a really beautiful movie. And it's inspirational. It's funny. You have to win the Oscar.

I will have some issues. And I promise I will scream about it on Pivot, too. Anyway, thank you so much. Thanks, Kara. It's really fun. Today's show is produced by Christian Castor Roussel, Michelle Aloy, Megan Bernie, and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Catherine Barner.

Our engineers are Fernando Ruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you already subscribe to the show, you're slaying demons and you're golden. If not, you're my soda pop. Go wherever you listen to podcast. Search for On With Caraswisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Caraswisher from Podium Media, New York, magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.