An estimated $18M in two days… Cool!

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2363392001/

And no AMC theatres. They don't do business with Netflix movies that hit theaters.

How do I find out what theaters this is playing at in Manhattan. I just tried Googling it and no list of showtimes appeared, as usually does in these searches, only links to sing-along events this past weekend. Is it really not playing in theaters?

So does Sony own the merchandising or Netflix?
Netflix throws so many darts on the wall (and then completely abandons them if they don't hit immediately) that I'm not sure they're built to like heavily promote a show like this until the second go around. But if anyone knows that Korean Pop and Korean Drama are huge, it's them.

It was only playing this past weekend as the sing a long event.

And I already told you fandango.com is the main listing site for all movies.

The Sing-A-Long edition dropped on Netflix.

Only difference is big subtitles during the songs. Unless you’re hosting a party with your friends or family, there is probably no point to watching that one at home.

Golden this week is #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the second time

I heard Golden on the radio for the first time yesterday
Radio play has increased steadily since the beginning of August.
16.2 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 39%) last week.

KPop Demon Hunters becomes the first soundtrack with four simultaneous
top 10s: Golden (#1), Your Idol (#4), Soda Pop (#5), and How It’s Done (#10)

HUNTR/X is the first all-woman group to hit #1 since Destiny’s Child (“Bootylicious”) in 2001.

https://www.billboard.com/lists/hunt...fourth-top-10/

They've gotta be the first "fictional" group to do it too, right?

That’s what kinda baffling about this whole thing. It’s like both sides seriously underestimated the popularity of not just K-pop, but K-style in general. It’s absolutely massive. If you got kids, they know about it. Period. And plenty of us adults have been ‘riding’ the wave since the late 90’s, to boot. Sony seems to have shunted the film to Netflix based on some misplaced assumption before it even had a finished product and seemingly avoided reading the room (globally) about its potential. And Netflix, home to countless Korean movies and dramas that have actually boosted the awareness of that country’s already long-thriving entertainment machine even higher, seemed to think it didn’t rate any ancillary tie-ins right out of the gate. I’m sure it will all get sorted out now that it looks to be a franchise, but man.

As I mentioned earlier, there are currently over two hundred active K-pop bands. Barely a week goes by that K-pop songs aren’t on the billboard top ten charts. That’s unheard of historically, with popular music from any non-‘western’ culture, aside from the occasional one-offs (remember ‘Sukiyaki’ . . . in 1963?). In that context, the performance of the DEMON HUNTERS soundtrack and its songs as noted just above shouldn’t be at all surprising. The potential to load up a series of these films or spinoff shows with a full roster of new songs – which seem to be cranked out daily – from multiple tiers of ‘idol’ groups is a kind of synergy that probably requires very little effort.




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This is a digression (albeit related), so feel free to ignore me. While many folks can rightly say Korean pop music isn’t their bag, listen to, say, twenty or thirty random songs/videos by random groups and you may very well find something that sticks, and from there it can grow on you. The well is almost bottomless at this point. The industry itself and all who work within it are micromanaged to perfection (and to a fault, as noted earlier in this thread) but there’s no denying it’s a pervasive, well-oiled machine that no other country’s music industry can touch right now, thus some of the puzzlement over the early handling of K-POP DEMON HUNTERS, I think.

Personally – like most ‘bubblegum’ music from time immemorial – I find a lot of K-Pop tuneage to be lyrically insipid (even gibberish in the case of some of the English lyrics), and compositionally cookie-cutter, often edging rather close to being indistinguishable from stuff you can create now on AI music apps. But there’s no denying it’s catchy as hell and dynamically performed (DEMON HUNTERS gets at this aspect really well). Great exercise music, too, if that’s your thing.

And ask your kids about how it’s blown up into its own wildly popular genre of ‘Random Play Dance’ gatherings because every song by every group has unique, hip-hop inspired choreography routines, and knowing as many of those as possible earns some serious street cred.

Here’s a Random Play Dance event from KCon in Los Angeles. These range in size depending on the size of your local event, of course, but there’s never a shortage of people who seemingly know a staggering number of the routines (most of these on YouTube are long, but a few minutes will give you the idea):


And plenty of other countries:

Theatre sing-a-longs are definitely not my thing, but free food/culture/music festival events definitely are (hey, I’m cheap). I can say that for folks like DJAriya who enjoy ‘experiences’ in general, and who live in or near cities that have any kind of Korean food/culture festivals – which is more likely than not these days – you’re now practically guaranteed to not only enjoy some high-energy ‘random dance’ contests by younger, fitter generations (from all cultural backgrounds, tellingly) but also official K-dance competitions by local pro outfits, and most likely a FREE live concert by an actual K-Pop group, often apparently a newer unit that’s in the tier that can still be booked for local festivals and bigger corporate events as well as decent-sized concert venues, but no less talented than the big league players.

The Toronto Korean Festival here started booking real K-Pop groups three years ago (after decades of typical local singers and dance troops from the community) and because of this they may potentially outgrow the public square they’ve been using all these years.

This past weekend, the 2025 TKF booked a new-ish (since 2023) boy group called One Pact. Last year it was a girl group called Purple Kiss. I went to last year’s festival assuming Purple Kiss was probably some Toronto cover band based on my random visits years earlier but when nobody left the amphitheatre area after the preceding instrumental performers despite a half-hour break between acts, I knew something was fishy and googled them to discover they were a real deal. So I kept my spot for another 20 minutes (ugh!) but enjoyed a bang-up show. I do think these groups put in the same effort whether they’re doing a stadium, concert hall, or ‘lowly’ food festival. So last year’s act plus my history with Korean culture got me back to this year’s fest to see One Pact. Even bigger crowd, equally shallow/catchy music, and a pretty decent show, for the admission price of zero. So check your local listings.

(Recorded with my phone, so they are what they are, screaming teens included )

(ETA: I visit many of the spring/summer/fall freebie street food and cultural festivals around this city and only the Korean festival (which is thankfully nearby) now has headliners that draw these kinds of crowds. All of the other ‘fests’ book buskers, cover bands, etc. Very talented, but they get modest crowds of passers-by in comparison. K-Pop is a different beast, even when it’s free)

First "fictional" girl group probably.

Other fictional groups to hit #1:

The Archies (Sugar, Sugar) in 1969
Encanto (We Don’t Talk About Bruno) in 2022

I was researching the Archies but you beat me to it

It played for one week in SF, LA and NY the same day it debuted
on Netflix so it could get Oscar consideration.

Maybe if it stayed in limited release for a month it could have
gotten big, but no chance of that with it already on Netflix...

Surely once a Netflix logo is on something, a lot of people know they might as well just wait and watch it in the subscription they’re already paying for. Even an extended limited theatrical run might not have mattered because it was already a ‘Netflix film’ in the public consciousness. It’s one of the more disheartening things about picking movies at the film festival here now. So many of them are already tagged for Netflix and other streamers that the festival is practically becoming a preview for the services. How times have changed.

My post on TikTok about planning to see this movie yesterday kind of blew up. At least for me it did with very little followers.

I just posted some text with bright colors and added music of “This is what it sounds like”

4300 plus views, over 550 likes, and over 40 comments. All very positive. My post probably circulated pretty well in the algorithm.

The hype is really strong.

^ Nice. That’s K-Pop for ya.

Too bad Sony didn’t see the potential.

I kept seeing and ignoring this in my Netflix feed, but two very different acquaintances mentioned it so I gave it a try. I thought it was really good, and the music rocked. I'll probably watch it again.

I think Saja Boys from this same feature also made it to number 1, but I was talking more of the all woman part. Great examples I never would have thought of, though.

I do think maybe one reason Netflix and co. wrote it off is the origin: this isn't like a Korean original animation or anything which is what you would think would get the headlines (I think Lost in Starlight got more pub), this is a Korean-Canadian and an American writing the screenplay. Granted they did a fantastic job with it and got some great Korean talent to work on and promote it, but otherwise I'd think you look at something like "Turning Red" and think that's about the potential. Shoot I was ready to kind of dismiss it myself even though I loved, say, The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

And like I said before, it doesn't help that they had a "Chinese American fights against demons" animated series in Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld like just 6 months ago that to my knowledge didn't move the needle that much (though we liked it well enough)

The two highest so far for the Saja Boys:

Your Idol (#4), Soda Pop (#5)

Ah, apologies, they reached number one on Spotify US (only the fourth Korean act to do so, with the other three examples being individual members of BTS and Blackpink)

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some truth to this on the part of executives. As I mentioned in my long-winded earlier post, Sony seems to have misread the (global) room somewhat when it comes to the popularity of Korean culture, but especially the music! Maybe Netflix too, to a smaller degree. LOST IN STARLIGHT was excellent but wasn’t likely to burst beyond Netflix internationally, like other Korean animations. Stuff like SEEING RED and (I assume?) JENTRY CHAU are all well and good even though they cover awfully overused territory at their cores.

There are substantial differences between the cultures, especially their popular cultures. Korean entertainment has done an impressive job achieving global “cool” over the past 30 years both via the music and in films and TV shows across all genres (notably unbeholden to government dictates back home). The North American makers of DEMON HUNTERS had popular, contemporary, ready-made elements – the catchy music and its industry, and even the shamanism – to kick up a few notches without having to adapt complex four-hundred year old fantasy literature (a la NE ZHA 2) or lean almost entirely on tired-out ‘intergenerational struggle’ tropes to do it (and yes I know there’s some of that in DEMON HUNTERS, naturally, but it’s not the whole show). It’s a little unfortunate that Sony (and Netflix, at least at first) didn’t have the same faith, but obviously fans are running with it and that’s great to see. (I heard ‘Soda Pop’ and ‘Golden’ all over the Korean festival I mentioned visiting on the weekend). It will be interesting to see if a sequel to this can stay under Sony and be given a theatrical run, maybe likewise with a singalong alternative. That’s assuming K-Pop will still be popular whenever that happens, which certainly seems probable.

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ETA: Not that anyone should doubt the commercial viability of nearly all K-Pop at this point, but it’s worth noting that the view counts on the music videos for the four current top ten songs from the movie (all comprised of clips from the film) suggest an awareness that surely would’ve translated into decent movie theater ticket sales and word of mouth had the film solely gone that route:

Golden - 234 million
Soda Pop - 160 million
How It’s Done - 160 million
You Idol - 128 million

Although I have already seen it three times at this point, I almost never watched it at all. I dismissed the preview I saw on Netflix (it was a clip of when Jinu mocked Rumi's pants) as "not for me". My sister tried to convince me to watch it but, given the generational gulf between us (I am 22 years older), we seldom like the same things. If not for my best friend telling me it was right up my alley (she and I bonded almost 30 years ago over a shared love for Sailor Moon), I would never have given myself the opportunity to love this flick as much as I do. I must say, as odd as Sony's casual indifference to this flick had been, Netflix really didn't do much to promote it either. It was word of mouth that caused it to explode.

^ Exactly. While it’s great to see all the buzz it’s still a shame it couldn’t have happened in conjunction with a wide theatrical release (imagine it in 3D, too - sigh). Cool cross-promotional stuff like this probably would’ve happened within the first couple of weeks instead of two months later.


These would also have come out a hell of a lot sooner, and probably sold like hot cakes, err, noodles, maybe even at theatres for kicks (though not prepared). Just ridiculous all the delayed opportunities we’ll probably be seeing now.




Apparently Funko is also forcibly late to the nearly-lost marketing bonanza:



But hey, if the end result is that this film draws even more people into the K-Culture orbit – music, movies, tv, food – then I’m obviously all for it.

On a related note, folks here who weren’t familiar with K-Pop music but really dug the tunes in the movie might enjoy exploring more of it on Spotify or YouTube or wherever. Divorced from the movie, the soundtrack songs are literally cookie-cutter in the truest K-Pop fashion, no better and no worse than virtually all the rest, and great ear worms nonetheless. In other words, if you like these you’ll like those, probably to the same degree. It’s literally assembly-line stuff with a very fixed formula at this point, but it just seems to click and the production and performances are always tight. Thanks to social media from about 2011 onward, it certainly unites people in ways few other musical styles have done (aside from live concerts, obviously, but this stuff goes far beyond that), and the industry has long acknowledged the unmistakeable influence of All-American funk, disco, r&b, and rap. So if you like the songs in this movie, the rest of K-pop is literally like that and just as good.

Funny, I buy Shin ramyun all the time. Wasn't aware they started crosspromoting.

It's a moot point since it's a conflict of interest for Netflix, as they
probably want the theatrical window to be as short as possible.

The solution is simply not have Netflix involved in the first place,
but probably easier said than done...

Yeah, I don’t really recall anything like this from that brand even in the Asian grocery stores here, where you’ll nearly always find something being cross-promoted with Korean pop culture. Other Asian food brands jumped on the SQUID GAME opportunity, even in the U.S. (Bibigo, mostly) and have paired up with various K-Pop stars on limited edition items, but this movie should’ve been a no-brainer for a ramen company from day one, but . . . Netflix, I guess.

Nongshim to launch 'KPop Demon Hunters'-themed products