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The K-pop in KPop Demon Hunters was added at the end to give it spectacle but became the "spine" of the Netflix hit
With a soundtrack full of incredible songs, it is hard to imagine a version of KPop Demon Hunters without the K-pop
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The music in KPop Demon Hunters, aside from being very good, is very much a core part of the movie, so you might be surprised to discover that the idea of music idols moonlighting as badass demon hunters wasn’t the original pitch that Maggie Kang originally put together. In fact, the K-pop part of the story was one of the last story aspects to be added to KPop Demon Hunters.
During an interview, the co-director and co-writer of KPop Demon Hunters, Maggie Kang, talked about how the idea came about. Like many stories, it started as one thing and quickly grew and changed as she wrote it. The music, arguably the best part of the film, was a last-minute addition. “K-pop was added in as the last thing,” she explained. “Something that could add spectacle and made it a musical and just gave it that scale and really a great selling point for a big studio to be like, ‘Look, this is a K-pop movie!’ But it’s a very culturally Korean movie.”
Despite being something that was a relatively late addition to the core idea, it was the K-pop angle that helped bring Maggie’s directing and writing partner, Chris Appelhans, onto the project. “I also grew up as a musician, and I love music as much as I love film, and I always wanted to find a project that had a justification for using music as the spine in not a Disney musical way. As soon as Maggie told me about this, I’m like, ‘This is the one.’”
With the music at the heart of the movie, KPop Demon Hunters has become one of the biggest films in Netflix history. In fact, the streamer has confirmed that it is the fourth most-streamed English-language movie in their library and still shows no signs of slowing down. It is amazing what a great K-pop soundtrack can do, after all.
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