‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Directors on Meeting Fan Expectations and Championing Original, Inclusive Animation

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.

One of the most difficult things to do for us Simulation Artists is to create dynamic movement in jewelry pieces.
In these outfits Rumi has more than 35 individual pieces of jewelry from earrings to chains.
¿Most complex piece? Mira’s shoulder tassels !!
KPOP DH June 20! pic.twitter.com/yuNFVAqBtt

— Cruz Contreras (@cruzencanada) June 8, 2025

io9: What was the most thrilling moment in directing KPop Demon Hunters, where you hit an eureka moment in production when you truly felt you were bringing something unique and special to life?

Appelhans: In stages. Different scenes delivered a different part of the promise. I remember Maggie doing some really funny reference videos for one of the girls’ conversations and seeing in animation daily—that exact comedy shows up in our characters—and I’m like, “Oh my god, the girls are going to be really cute, and adorable, and weird.” And the first time seeing great choreo and animation. Some of our Korean animators did some stuff that we didn’t even ask for, they just took it and ran with it, and we got the butterflies. Like, “Check, oh my gosh. We can do this.” We kept checking boxes that were part of this whole ambitious soup.

Kang: Similar to me, too. Finding the shape language of even their eyes and mouth shapes on a Korean face, we wanted the expressions to feel very Korean and the girls’ mouth shapes to feel like they’re speaking Korean, even though they were speaking in the English language. One of the solutions we found—one of our amazing animators Sofia [Seung Hee Lee]—figured out rounding the corners of the mouth was really helpful in them feel that way. Those kind of milestones of figuring out certain languages for design and style really cracked those problems.

Appelhans: Every time we heard the version of a song that we finally felt was doing it—whether it was the third try or the ninth try—when a song really started to hit and we would feel it in our guts, that was always like, “Oh my gosh, we did it. One more piece to the puzzle” because that’s so elusive—a pop song that’s actually a bop.

My only contribution to KPOP Demon Hunter. Screaming characters seems to be my thing.

Congrats to the rest of the hard working crew of this movie! @sonyanimation pic.twitter.com/z48xJsLSpN

— Guillermo Martinez (@billybobmartinz) May 24, 2025

io9: Speaking of pop songs, the film also features contributions from the talented members of Twice. How did you approach collaborating with K-pop artists to bring the musical elements of KPop Demon Hunters to life? What was the process of ensuring the soundtrack not only energized the film but also complemented its emotional core?

Kang: It was really important for the entire movie to live in that K-pop space. And collaborating with an actual K-pop artist felt like it finally legitimized our project in the K-pop world. Working with Black Label and all these amazing pop writers that write for BTS, Twice, and ultimately collaborating with Twice. Ian Eisendrath, who is our executive music producer, and Sony Music really wanted this album to feel like a real, legit K-pop album, so they brought this amazing team together and created an album that can hold up in the K-pop space.

io9: Recently, animated films like Turning Red and Ultraman: Rising have demonstrated the power of animation as both a storytelling medium and a bridge into beloved fandoms, such as K-pop and Tokusatsu. These films not only celebrate vibrant animation and bring life to pre-existing fandoms but also center Asian heritage and allow characters to center in their authentic narratives. What was most important in balancing the global appeal of K-pop with the significance of Asian-led stories told by Asian characters?

Kang: One way to answer that is that in animation, we’ve told a lot of stories about inanimate objects [and] different animals. And we’ve yet to tell stories that are culturally specific through a different cultural voice that can also be very universal. It’s really promising that we are seeing more films and animation that are told through a different cultural lens. It’s really important to try to feature as much diversity as possible in animation because, primarily, it is still regarded as a medium for more of a younger audience. We have all these different films globally that showing us that and it feels like we’re not really doing that quite yet in animation. I think that is something that we really need to give more diversity at this stage in animation.

Appelhans: What I’ve seen in my 25 years doing this is how much more diverse the actual day-to-day crews are and the talent, and that means everything. Because when Maggie shows up with an original idea, there are incredibly experienced and talented Korean artists in every department, and they don’t have to do any homework. It’s their lived experience they bring, their influences, their favorite things that shaped them as artists. That allows us to make more interesting, more original films than what could’ve been possible 25 years ago. It’s kind of happening under the hood, but it’s really promising and exciting.

io9: What do you hope audiences and your fellow creative colleagues in animation take away from experiencing KPop Demon Hunters wanting to share this universal story with the world?

Kang: There’s nothing like film that shows that no matter what language you speak, what culture you grew up in, no matter if you are a demon, a chair, or a toy doll, everybody feels the same things as human beings. Telling stories with characters that emote in a very Korean way and speak looking very Korean, I hope that audiences and filmmakers can see that we all ultimately are human and we feel and want the same things which is love and acceptance

KPop Demon Hunters streams on Netflix starting June 20.

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