KPop Demon Hunters케이팝 데몬 헌터스

KPop Demon Hunters (케이팝 데몬 헌터스) is a 2025 animated musical film made by Sony Pictures Animation for Netflix, which began streaming it worldwide on June 20, 2025. Maggie Kang (강민지; real name Kang Min-ji) and Chris Appelhans directed it, and Kang came up with the story.¹ It follows Huntrix, a fictional K-pop girl group whose members Rumi, Mira and Zoey secretly hunt demons, and their rivals the Saja Boys, a boy band of demons in disguise. It is an American film, so DabPop treats it as a crossover with Korea as its anchor: the story draws on Korean mythology and K-pop, Korean actors Ahn Hyo-seop (안효섭) and Lee Byung-hun (이병헌) voice the Saja Boys' leader Jinu and the demon king Gwi-Ma, and the songs were made with K-pop writers and producers, among them Ejae (이재), who sings for Rumi, and Teddy (테디) and 24 of The Black Label. Three members of TWICE (트와이스) sing the end-credits version of "Takedown".¹⁶

On streaming, Netflix ranks it first among its most popular films, with 325.1 million views in its first 91 days. Netflix counts a view as hours watched divided by running time.² It passed the first season of Squid Game as Netflix's most-watched title on September 3, 2025.⁶ In the week of September 28 to October 4, 2026, it was No. 10 on Netflix's global Top 10 for English-language films, its 67th week on that list.³ A sing-along version became the first Netflix film to top the US weekend box office, on August 23–24, 2025.¹⁶

Its soundtrack was the first to have four songs in the Billboard Hot 100's top 10 at once.⁴ The single "Golden" reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 on the chart dated August 16, 2025, and spent eight weeks there⁵, as well as 18 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200. In Korea it reached No. 1 on the Circle Digital Chart and won Best OST at both the 2025 MAMA Awards and the 2025 Melon Music Awards.⁶ "Golden" then became the first K-pop song to win a Grammy (Best Song Written for Visual Media, February 1, 2026) and an Academy Award. At the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, 2026, the film also won Best Animated Feature.¹⁶ DabPop's feature How KPop Demon Hunters Sent K-Pop Up the Global Charts lists 22 of its records. The film reached Korean shelves too: Nongshim (농심) sold co-branded products in the US and a limited run of Shin Ramyun cups based on the ones in the film.⁷