KPOP Demon Hunters - an animated  movie that's  reshaping the future of entertainment

KPOP Demon Hunters began streaming on Netflix on June 20th, 2025. Within weeks, it was topping Netflix charts around the world, and exploding on social media. The movie’s soundtrack, inspired by modern KPop music ranked #1 on Spotify’s streaming list, with the movie music topping the rankings and global popularity of actual Kpop artists, including BTS and Blackpink. Yet, without a theatrical release in cinemas and largely quiet marketing by Sony Animation, the movie’s popularity was completely unprecedented. It’s reception shows a change in our world of entertainment, and a transformation in the way we might be approaching the future of music and movies. 

With a unique premise of Kpop idols who use their art to fight and trap demons, the movie took on a brave, if weird, premise. The move appealed to a specific niche - while the KPop industry was enormous and global, and the previous success of the two Spider-Verse movies showed the potential of action-based animation to be tremendously successful, merging the two niches was a bold move by the animation house. With that risk, the movie’s marketing and release lived on streaming platforms - the film premiered on Netflix and eventually became the most popular film on the streaming platform, with 236 million watchers. It contributed to a 17% revenue growth in the subsequent quarter, as it reengaged viewers to the platform. On Spotify, the album gained over 50 million monthly listeners, and the music video for Golden, one of the hit songs of the movie, has over 500 million views on YouTube. 

This marks a unique change in the future of movies - Kpop Demon Hunters didn’t get a theatrical release until its popularity exploded, and since then, has only had limited theatrical releases over a few weekends. We might see more and more movies leave the traditional box office and move onto our streaming platforms. Does this mean the end of movie theatres? Probably not. But, like with many other shifts in the entertainment industry, the success of this movie is transforming the way we see media now, and for a long time to come.

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