‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Director On Getting K-Pop Culture Down

South Korea has been dominating the global pop music scene for the past few years with groups like BTS, BLACKPINK, TWICE, and Stray Kids. There have been multiple projects surrounding K-pop music, including a Broadway musical, documentaries, and several film projects.

One of the projects includes Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters, an animated feature centered on a K-pop girl group that also serves as a team of demon hunters sworn to protect their fans from supernatural threats. Things become complicated when a popular rival boy band is revealed to be demons.

Director Maggie Kang didn’t expect the impact of Korean culture and K-pop, which inspired her to write this film. When she was in elementary school in Canada, her teacher couldn’t locate South Korea on the map. Now, her film is set to release on Netflix and has been praised by critics and fans.

“It was surreal,” Kang says. “Every step of the way and every milestone we hit, I can’t believe we’re able to do this.”

She had been working on this project for over nine years, aiming to create a story that explores Korean demon mythology and lore, starring badass women. The K-pop aspect was always present, but it was the last part that was developed in the story. They had initially planned for the animation to be a lower-budget movie that was a lot grittier and darker than the final product looked.

“Rumi was going to be the black sheep of her family,” Kang explains. “It still had the themes of shame about their worth, but there was this girl who was kinda a dropout and failure, before discovering her lineage and living up to it, proving her own self-worth within herself. It was a story with ancestors and a little bit more Asian.”

Kang was informed that the project had expanded significantly, which altered the story slightly, introducing two additional characters – Mira and Zoey. She found it funny that there were three members in Huntrix, but they created five characters for the Saja Boys.

“At first, Sony was like ‘Can [Rumi] just be a solo artist?’,” says Kang. “I was like, no, she needs to be part of a group.”

When creating a K-pop group, there’s a lot to be included in the story, especially the fandom: terminology, lightsticks, photocards, shipping, fan signs, variety shows, comebacks, and more. The screenplay, written by Kang, co-director Chris Appelhans, Hannah McMechan, and Danya Jimenez (with assistance from K-pop fans and writers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt), perfectly captured the fan culture.

Kang says it was a group effort in creating this story and the culture surrounding it. She credits McMechan and Jimenez for their research on the K-pop culture aspect, and even became K-pop fans themselves.

“They became K-pop fans because of this movie,” Kang explains. “As they were doing research, they became total stans of K-pop – to the point that they would be up at three in the morning to refresh to watch music videos and then vote on stuff.”

She says they became her K-pop experts. Anytime she had a question, she would text them for the answer. She says, “It felt like a second job to be updated on all the K-pop things. As production rolled through, Kang just ran out of time to learn about K-pop culture. So, she depended on them for the knowledge.

The art department also had knowledgeable K-pop fans on staff who were involved in every part of the production. At one point, there was a scene where the idols competed against each other in the Idol Star Athletics Championships, also known as ISAC.

“For people who don’t know: [ISAC] is like the Olympics for Korean idols,” says Kang. “When we cut that scene in, all the executives were like, “What is this? Why are they suddenly doing the Olympics and running hurdles and doing archery?” That eventually became a fan signing event. But, for a very long time, they had Rumi and Jinu doing archery, as they were having that conversation.”

The animation team also played its part in highlighting the Korean idols’ faces. Kang says they all drew inspiration from K-dramas and had Korean animators involved in the film.

“One of the animators, Sophia [(Seung Hee) Lee], was instrumental in figuring out certain eye shapes and mouth shapes – just rounding the corners of the mouth gave it this more Korean feeling. For some reason, it was just so strange. Once we figured that out, it opened up the movie, and we were like, ‘This is it. This is our look’.”

Lighting was challenging for the team, as they tried to find the perfect placement for the most appealing angles and lighting. Kang recalls it being quite a journey, as well as more difficult than they expected.

“The way we lit the faces was challenging because our faces just look different,” says Kang. “Our models look different as well. It was a challenging and different undertaking for our lighters to figure out. So, it was interesting.”

When it came to the K-pop music aspect, their team collaborated with THEBLACKLABEL, owned by the legendary producer Teddy Park, who has worked with K-pop’s biggest names, including BIGBANG, G-DRAGON, BLACKPINK, and 2NE1. Adding to the K-pop connections, the film secured the popular K-pop girl group, TWICE, to sing the main title song, “Takedown.”

Kang and Appelhans were initially naive about how much of the music would be featured in the movie. They discussed it being a non-traditional musical, which meant that there wouldn’t be a lot of singing involved in the storytelling. Things changed, and the music became an integral part of the story.

“Through the help of our executive music producer [Ian Eisendrath], who comes from a more musical background, we quickly realized some of the songs were taking up two minutes or so of screentime, they had to carry the story,” Kang says. “It forced us to answer a lot of tricky story questions when finding the lyrics out.”

They created these documents for the songwriters, detailing the scene and how the characters were feeling and why. The musicians and songwriters would then come up with music and lyrics that matched perfectly with the story, keeping it in the K-pop style.

Although everything seemed to fit into the K-pop world, one thing was missing: a fandom name. Kang reveals the Saja Boys fans are called the Pride, but never came up with one for Huntrix.

Kang says, “We will leave it up to the fans.”

KPop Demon Hunters premieres tomorrow, Friday, June 20, on Netflix.