It’s also not her first movie musical.


I’ve seen her in a few things now (BAYTOWN OUTLAWS, OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, THE HONOR LIST, STUCK [see above] even the dreadful Debbie Gibson / Tiffany mashup MEGA PYTHON way way back) and always felt she could be bigger. However, because DEMON HUNTERS is animated I’m not sure how that might play into her live-action career, but hopefully it helps. She’s done a lot of TV work so I suspect she’ll keep bouncing between both mediums.

- - - - - -

ETA: AppleTV has a new show called KPopped that starts tomorrow (Aug. 29). I have no doubt this was inspired in part by DEMON HUNTERS raising the profile of K-style in general (they’ve certainly had enough time to throw it together) but since I absolutely loathe reality TV in all its forms, including music contest shows, I wouldn’t watch this one even if it was on OTA television. I’ll stick to streaming actual K-Pop songs and videos when the mood hits. This looks like the usual flashy reality garbage like the rest of it to these eyes, and in this case it’s another excuse for has-been western celebrities to get their aging faces in front of the cameras again so rising K-Pop idol bands can re-do their old hits. But hey, for folks who want to see these worlds collide, there it is:

In terms of merch for KPDH I don't blame them at all for underestimating the impact. If Disney can underestimate Frozen and Encanto then overestimate Wish and Lightyear it shows how difficult it is from a merchandising standpoint to make the right call. It takes a lot of time and planning and logistics to make merch happen and if they misjudge they've wasted a lot of capital to produce junk that will just sit on clearance shelves and further tarnish their image.

Besides, when was the last time a Netflix show produced a sizeable merchandise opportunity? Stranger Things? Even that is a modest success at best.

And it's not like it's success is just a flash in the pan. The demand will still be there (and I'm sure will grow with kids being back in school) when the merch does get released so it's not like they lost out on sales.



Now Sony Music execs passing on the rights to the entire soundtrack??? That's a whole new level of management stupidity.

With the late push, might miss out on some Halloween and Christmas sales though...

They did release a CD soundtrack from Republic Records for $15. But, it doesn’t ship until next week. But Sony is dumb for not licensing the music on their own record label.



https://www.republicrecords.com/prod...83e5b861&_ss=r

They'll catch it next year. This really might be one of those evergreen merchandise IPs like Frozen or Spider-Man.

We'll see.

I did preorder those funkos through Amazon and they said they're releasing in early December so we'll see if it really gets here before Christmas or if it's just a placeholder.

Do you have a link? Nothing comes up on my end.

I do agree that the demand will be there, but I still think the fact the fact that we can still, even now, count the tie-ins on one hand (more or less) shows a stunning lack of foresight, or even just acknowledging something that has been massive internationally since long before this movie was a thought in its creators heads. You’re right about the risk of getting it wrong and then having all sorts of junk collecting dust on retail shelves, but I think we’re beyond the point where savvy marketers just willy-nilly toss out licensing contracts for every company that asks for one. They can be much more stealthy and selective about it. In this case, though, they did nothing. I think if they felt there was so much risk (which there clearly wasn’t, but let’s assume) they still could’ve chosen a small number of limited-run collaborations that wouldn’t be embarrassing if the film was a dud. The Nongshim one was the most obvious. Just some characters on the packages. Stick ‘em in stores, and if the film’s a hit, keep printing the tie-in packaging (on existing printing lines no less). If it fails, start shipping the old packaging so the movie stuff is replaced on shelves in short order. Also, ramen noodles (and even other food tie-ins) aren’t like, say, action figures or play sets or other stuff that genuinely does end up rotting on discount store shelves forever (the recurring YouTube videos of mountains of unpopular Disney/Star Wars/Marvel toys at Ollie’s are a good lesson in what Tanman’s talking about). Still, like you say, it’s pretty obvious the buzz will probably last a while on this one, so the merchandise opportunities can still grow.

Mine already shipped from Amazon. It's due to arrive on September 8. But Sony Music isn't seeing a dime from that. Universal Music Group, via Republic Records, is reaping the profits from the album.

Doesn't seem to be available now. But keep checking.

Even stuff like Stranger Things, Squid Games, or most recently Wednesday, took forever to get merch out. I'd also think that partners were not hammering them trying to get tie ins to this largely unknown property, regardless of how popular Kpop is here, without knowing the quality of the soundtrack and how it would be received. This movie could've very easily fumbled with just a few wrong decisions. The only way they missed out is if this is just a flash in the pan, which this doesn't seem to be. Licensing it out after it gets popular also makes them a lot more money, I'd gather.

That's the thing with streaming --- Streaming is not a two-month
window so streaming has the luxury of waiting til the first movie/
first season starts getting popular before moving forward...

Well it kinda depends. They drop so much content that stuff gets easily lost in the shuffle after it premieres, but this one seems to have legs so not a major concern.

I haven't seen anything on it, but has there been any story about how Sony execs are responding to this and has there been any head-rolling resulting from letting this huge cash machine out of their grasp?

Last night I was scrolling through the TikTok shop and found a Hunt/rx and Saja Boys T-Shirts for only $8.99 each with free shipping. They were part of their labor day sales.

(Note, I am not sure they are "officially" licensed, but for under $10 and free shipping, why not?)

So put in an order for both.

I think I mentioned this before but Anime Expo in LA was like two weeks after the premiere of this movie and the artist alley was full of stuff for it. Those artists work quick!

^ That’s where a lot of the money is going right now, and it looks good on Netflix and Sony, frankly. When you don’t read the market, the market gets the job done itself. At the Korean festival I mentioned visiting last weekend, there was a couple of rows of vendors selling various K-related products and it wasn’t hard to spot totally unlicensed DEMON HUNTERS merch subtly mixed in the offerings, including t-shirts, screen-printed handbags, little plastic keychain thingies, press-on nails (!), even little bootleg Lego minifig characters. Just in the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a huge influx of these vendors – sourcing all their wares stuff cheap from you-know-where – at literally every street festival that I go to here. Mind you, even if Sony and/or Netflix hadn’t dropped the ball, these products would be out there. It’s just the way of the world now. I wouldn’t be surprised if certain China-based online retail behemoths aren’t already chock full of DEMON HUNTERS merch.

(Checks Temu and . . . yup, there it is! Tons of it. Including some items I kinda recall from the festival )

I get what folks are saying the this could’ve been a huge disaster with a few missteps, but at this point in the K-Wave, I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy who could see it coming, and considering every new American theatrical animation movie that comes out has at least some preliminary licensing deals attached – even if the movie goes on to underperform – at least they’re in place so the studios and filmmakers can hedge their bets in case it does take off, and to maybe prevent at least some ancillary revenue from going to the crooks who are now making a mint off this movie (and every other IP under the sun).

When corporations don't work quick, the marketplace sure as hell does. Movie execs have to be clueless sometimes (which is nothing new, I suppose).

I'm pretty sure they have tshirts and merch at places like Hot Topic already, though. Whether people buy that instead of whatever they can find is another question.

OTOH, if it got lost in the shuffle soon after premiering, then it probably wasn't very popular anyway...

Totally agree. When it comes to merch they took the right path. There's way more flops than surprise hits and it's always a lot easier and less risky to pivot to producing merchandise than having all of that produced and not selling at all.


You're way overestimating kpop culture here in the US. There is no K-wave. At least not to the point where they would have prepared shelves of merchandising ready to go for an unheard of western produced k-pop like animated movie released directly to streaming. They did hedge their bets by not producing anything. They're not loosing out on anything. A few T-shirt sales? They don't care about that. How would they have marketed it to all those companies without any kind of results before it released? Now they'll have companies coming to them and they can leverage the best deals since it's a certified smash hit. I wouldn't feel too bad for them. Trust me they'll make their money.

And personally I don't think the success of KPDH necessarily equals Kpop success. Don't get me wrong it will definitely increase visibility and get a lot of westerners into Kpop, Jpop, even just plain pan-Asian culture in general. But I wouldn't expect Kpop to suddenly start taking over the Billboard charts.

But Sony execs giving up the record rights to their rivals. Yeah...that was a huge blunder.

KPDH pop yourself coming soon.

https://funko.com/pop-yourself.html

They've been doing that for a while, albeit with the same volatile fluctuations as any music genre/fad/whatever.

Today at work I was working on a promo for McDonald's. Much to my surprise, it was all Kpop themed. But not related to this movie. I initially assumed it was related to BTS. But one of the boards I printed said TinyTAN. My sister had to explain to me that it was indeed BTS related. Then she went on to explain how she wasn't much into BTS and went on to list a bunch of other Kpop groups she prefers. The list felt as endless and esoteric to me as when she talks about any of the girl groups other than the two or three I know.

I also recall when I went to see Godzilla Minus One in IMAX, and a few other movies before that, I'd see trailers for theatrical presentations of concerts of various Kpop groups I never heard of (but the younger patrons certainly recognized). Basically, Kpop may not be huge with people in their 40s like me, but it's no less a big deal now, and has been for a while.

I stand corrected.

.....partially....

There are definitely quite a few hits but very few breaking the top 10 even from super group BTS without some sort of collab from a popular western artist.

I guess the real telling thing will be if there will be a lot more kpop hits charting from here on out. Or if it will only be KPDH songs that chart.

BTS is coming back next year, so might be more hitting the charts soon...

I was thinking yesterday that it may be an even wider "problem"/shift - this summer saw a Jurassic film, the new Superman and Marvel's F4 all released*. Obviously I may have missed something, but frequently films have several grocery store tie-ins. All I saw was Dr. Pepper having dinosaur cans, Snapple and one of the cereal brands putting the F4 on the labels and Milk Bones doing a Krypto tie-in.

That was the least I can recall big, potentially popular, movies being marketed in recent memory. Maybe there's something in the air? Diminishing returns? Tarrifs? Coincidence?



*Minecraft Movie is still being printed on Poppi drink boxes, and the live Lilo movie had big displays of toys and games in the nearest Target, WalMart and Kroger, but that's Disney and a known entity.

The real Hunt/rx singers including Ejae are going to be signing CDs at a Barnes and Noble in Manhattan next Saturday.



That's going to be an absolute mob next week.