When Sony Pictures Animation first announced KPop Demon Hunters back in 2021, director, writer, and longtime K-pop devotee Maggie Kang (The Lego Ninjago Movie) envisioned the project as both a love letter to the early days of the genre she grew up with and a vibrant celebration of Korean culture. Teaming up with co-director Chris Appelhans (Wish Dragon), Kang set out to craft a film that merges the dazzling precision of K-pop choreography with the spectacle of magical girl action, all wrapped up in an original animated adventure premiering on Netflix on June 20.
KPop Demon Hunters follows Huntrix, a rising girl group made up of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey (voiced by Arden Cho, May Hong, and Ji-young Yoo), as they juggle their pop superstardom with their secret lives battling demons invading the human realm under the command of the sinister Gwi-Ma (played by Squid Game‘s Lee Byung-hun). To prevent the girls from enveloping the world in the healing light of their music, he concocts the only plan that could threaten the loyalty of their diehard fanbase: a rival supernatural boyband called the Saja Boys.
Before the film’s release, io9 spoke with Kang and Appelhands about how they balanced the expectations of K-pop superfans, magical girl enthusiasts, and animation lovers, as well as their hopes for how their original film might inspire a new wave of mythmakers in the animation industry.
Isaiah Colbert, io9: What sparked the idea of merging the world of K-Pop idols with demon hunting? Was there a defining moment or inspiration that led to this unique fusion of music and supernatural action?
Maggie Kang: It was first conceived as just a demon hunter idea that was a group of really awesome women who fought demons from Korean demonology—a movie that was set in modern-day Korea. The K-pop of it all was kind of the last thing to be added in because demon hunting is usually done in the dark alleyways. Not in front of people. I just wanted the girls to have a public-facing image and K-pop felt like a cool thing to set the movie in. It naturally made it a musical and gave it that spectacle and scale.
Track 01: "How it's Done". Performed by HUNTRIX! Kpop Demon Hunters premieres THIS FRIDAY! pic.twitter.com/U3y6Cq23CH — Netflix (@netflix) June 16, 2025
io9: Obviously with that title KPop Demon Hunters does set a high expectations for both electrifying action and dynamic dance sequences as well. KPop Demon Hunters naturally carries a lot of pressure, especially for K-pop fans eagerly anticipating it. How did the team navigate that challenge and ensure the film delivered on both fronts?
Kang: It was tough. It’s a very loyal, dedicated fanbase that expects a lot on every aspect. Whether it’s design, lighting, animation, we made sure that it would hold up to what we see in K-pop today. The dance practice videos that we see are so good already. It was like “How do we take what’s so great that they’re doing as real humans [and] bring it into animation and elevate that?” Even with some K-drama lighting and music video lighting is so beautiful. It was a challenge to bring it into the animation medium and be like, “Okay, they’ve done all this amazing stuff. How do we take it one step further?” It was a lot of first figuring out how do they do it currently and how we can take it up a notch because we’re animation.
Chris Appelhans: I think Maggie really early on said we all love K-pop and if we try to make it for our own fandom—let’s find lighting that we think is amazing, and choreo that we love, and go “Dude, that is so good”—that is the most honest, authentic way to make the movie. And, if we’re lucky, the other people who love K-pop will love it too. But that’s all we could control and that was actually really helpful because it felt like you could go and look at great music videos and be inspired by, “This is the kind of editorial lighting that I always love and always wanted to see in animation. I’m inspired to go get our lighting team to go raise their game to bring this level to the material.” I feel like it’s what you said, a love letter from the medium we know really well. We know this special stuff that you can’t do, also.
Kang: Watching it as fans ourselves and wanting to push the medium,[and] being our harshest critics.
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