When Maggie Kang first began developing what became the Netflix animated film KPop Demon Hunters, she found herself thinking a lot about her inner child.
Specifically, the 12-year-old girl she once was. That girl wasn’t a poised princess like so many of the popular Disney characters she’d see in popular media. She was goofy, could be messy and even a little gross, and wasn’t afraid to make herself seem silly for a laugh with her friends. The beauty of her girl gang wasn’t that they were perfect, it was that they were so far from it, and they didn’t care.
“If you’re going to be silly and make dumb faces, you need to do that with a crew who will embrace that part of you and laugh with you,” Kang, now a writer and director at Sony Pictures Animation, tells Glamour.
Kang channeled this version of her tween self when co-writing KPop Demon Hunters, specifically the main trio of characters, Rumi, Mira, and Zoey. The characters, who together make up the pop group HUNTR/X, have everything that makes them instant icons among young girls. They are beautiful, wear sparkly outfits, have cool hair (Rumi has a long, purple braid, Mira’s is a bright pink), and are great at singing.
But these girls are far from just style icons. Their KPop stardom is actually a cover for their real mission: ridding the world from demons that have plagued humanity for centuries. As the film explains, every generation a new group of women are tasked with battling off these demons by creating a barrier called the Honmoon—which they create through the beauty of their singing voices.
It turns out that Kang’s instincts were spot on. Girls not only wanted to watch a film about girls who were sparkly pop stars, but they wanted to watch those girls kick some serious ass. Since its premiere on Netflix on June 20, the film has taken over culture in a way that has Frozen’s Elsa and Anna shaking with irrelevance.
As a spokesperson for Netflix tells Glamour, the film has become the streamer’s most popular original animated film ever and is currently its second most popular movie overall. One of HUNTR/X’s original songs from the movie, “Golden,” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and it’s now the first movie soundtrack since 1995’s Waiting To Exhale to have three songs in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
In fact, HUNTR/X is now becoming one of the most successful girl groups of all time—they are the first since Destiny Child hit #1 on the Hot 100 with “Bootylicious” in August 2001 to top the chart.
But the film’s cultural relevance isn’t just borne out from statistics. If you’ve spent any time on the internet—or around a young girl—in the past few months you’ve seen how much it has permeated. On social media, parents joke about “Golden” hitting number one in their homes, show off their daughters’ Rumi-inspired sparkly braids, and are asking Reddit where exactly they can find HUNTR/X dolls or merch (there’s surprisingly little at this point, which we are sure will be rectified ASAP). And this weekend only, Netflix is releasing the film in theaters across the US for a special “sing-along event.”
But the beauty of the HUNTR/X trio isn’t just that they are both beautiful and badass, it’s how real—and therefore relatable—they are. Kang, who is Korean-Canadian, drew on her heritage in crafting the story, which not only incorporates elements from Korean mythology but authentic depictions of everything from the way the characters eat their gimbap and ramyeon.
And yes, these girls eat—in a way that shouldn’t be revolutionary but is. Rumi, Mira, and Zoey chow down on food with abandon, love laying on the couch, and act goofy and even a little gross. For Kang, this was a side of girlhood that felt authentic, but that she hadn’t seen herself in popular media as a kid.
“I hope girls can learn that there is power in comedy and silliness,” she says. “I don’t think we see this kind of woman a lot in film, and there’s this kind of fear of showing women look ‘ugly’ and imperfect, especially in animation, and that message doesn’t sit well with me. So I hope girls can learn that there’s beauty in our imperfections, even in how we look on the outside.”
Kang also drew inspiration from powerful women characters of the past, citing Sailor Moon and Black Widow and Gamora from Marvel as particular inspirations. And for those who saw echoes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Rumi, Kang says the creative team often cited the show when first pitching the idea.
“[It was] a lot of strong, butt kicking, intelligent women,” she says.
For Kang, who both co-wrote and co-directed the film alongside Chris Appelhans, watching how intensely young girls and teens have connected with her specific vision of what it means to be a strong woman has been validating in ways she never could have imagined.
“When you make a movie, you of course want it to speak to people, but I don’t think any of us expected this much love,” she says. “The love from young girls, nothing means more than that.”
And though the film covers themes from self-acceptance to finding your own power, Kang also hopes girls connect with the message of friendship.
“Just like how HUNTR/X has each other, girls should support and encourage each other’s silliness,” she says. “To me, that’s true girl power.”
The post How KPop Demon Hunters Harnessed Girl Power To Become One of Netflix’s Biggest Hits Ever appeared first on Glamour.
