In a world of remakes and endless franchises, audiences have been yearning for an original movie story-line (It’s me, I’m audiences). After a certain point, film-watching has become a pretty standardized experience in which the same plot-lines and tropes are rehashed time and time again, à la Hallmark. Even as an action/superhero movie enjoyer myself, I can admit that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the greatest offenders in terms of franchising — you can’t fully appreciate any of their current “Phase 5” projects without needing some basic knowledge that was laid out like 20 movies ago. Adding to that, Disney as a whole has been milking the world of live-action remakes as of late to mixed results.
Meanwhile, animated movies have been on the rise in recent years, with the first installment of Sony’s Spider-Verse franchise, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, at the very forefront. With its remarkable, lively animation style and compelling story, it marked the beginning of a kind of animation Renaissance. Films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Nimona (each of which deserves a whole article of their own) came out and brought joy and originality back to movie-watchers. Backed by Dreamworks and Netflix, respectively, both movies received a good amount of promotional materials to compel audiences to invest their time, as would be expected of studios that want to make money.
So why didn’t Netflix and Sony repeat this strategy with K-Pop Demon Hunters?
Although I’ve been discussing other movies up until now, I’m fairly sure you’re aware of K-Pop Demon Hunters by now, dear reader. Even if you haven’t seen the movie yet, the headlines about it and its success must’ve crossed your feed at least once. It’s become Netflix’s most popular movie of all time, after all.
The story goes as follows:
“Their fans may know them as pop stars, but the members of HUNTR/X are more than that: They’re powerful warriors using their music to save the world.” (from Netflix)
As you can imagine, having a K-Pop girl group fight a demon boy group using their music leads to serious hijinks. Especially when they’re trying to keep up appearances, not only with their manager and their fans, but even each other. Without giving too much away, K-Pop Demon Hunters is another film I’d add to the animation Renaissance, with a fun original plot, a stunning combination of 2D and 3D animation, an incredible voice acting cast, and one of the best original soundtracks I’ve heard in a while. In fact, the charts would agree with me, seeing as K-Pop Demon Hunters has managed to secure the top spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart, as well as individual songs like “Soda Pop” and “Your Idol” topping streaming charts on their own. Aside from the original soundtrack garnering success, a deluxe edition was later released, including bonus songs and acapella tracks that fans such as myself are completely obsessing over.
I believe that that combination of elements contributed to the utter lack of promotional material leading up to the release of K-Pop Demon Hunters. Both Netflix and Sony realized the absolute masterpiece they were going to unveil to audiences and understood that trying to market it might undercut the movie’s appeal in some way. Rather than come up with a trailer that wouldn’t do it justice, the studios allowed K-Pop Demon Hunters to speak — or sing — for itself and it was absolutely the right call.
Following their surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live this past October 5th, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, and REI AMI, the singing voice actors for Rumi, Mira, and Zoey, respectively, performed “Golden” on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on October 7th. I know I tuned in to help them strengthen the Honmoon, did you?