KPop Demon Hunters has been the smash hit of the summer, and Netflix is keen to cash in. It’s already rolling out KPop Demon Hunters experiences in its forthcoming Dallas and Philadelphia destinations, and according to Variety it’s in early talks with Sony about making a sequel.
KPop Demon Hunters isn’t so much a movie as a cultural phenomenon, according to Netflix’s head of film Dan Lin who told The Hollywood Reporter: “As word of mouth spread and social media caught on, we saw viewing really take off and the movie became a cultural phenomenon – it’s one of the only films to grow its audiences in its fifth and six weeks of release.”
The film has already racked up over 236 million total views on Netflix, and its soundtrack has broken records too. It’s the first soundtrack to have four songs in the Billboard Top 10 in the same week.
Why KPop Demon Hunters is almost certainly going to get a sequel
The film has been a critical hit as well as a commercial one: it’s currently sitting with 97% from the critics and 99% from the viewers on Rotten Tomatoes. As The Hollywood Reporter put it: “KPop Demon Hunters delivers not only a cornucopia of earworms whose melodies will be lingering in your brain for weeks, but also a fast and funny genre mash-up that puts most theatrical animated releases to shame.”
Netflix’s financial interest in making a sequel is obvious, but co-director Maggie Kang has already spoken of her desire to tell more stories in the KPop Demon Hunters universe. Speaking to Variety, she said that “We’ve set up so much for potential backstory. Obviously, there’s a lot of questions that are left unanswered and areas that are not explored, and we had to do that because there’s only so much movie you could tell in 85 minutes.”
Where the first film focused on lead singer Rumi, “we have backstories for Zoey and Mira – ones that we actually put in the movie, but it just kind of rejected it. It just wasn’t the movie for those stories.”
KPop Demon Hunters is streaming now on Netflix.
