There are many hit movies that seem like they are never going to go away and there are others that actually never go away. One that is very quickly putting itself in the latter category is the Netflix monster of a movie, KPop Demon Hunters, which will just not leave the stage and has returned for yet another encore at the top of the streamer’s U.S. chart.
Released back in June, KPop Demon Hunters arrived with very little fanfare, but did not take long to be noticed by audiences and took its place in the number one spot within days of its arrival. Thanks to some incredible reviews from critics, strong word of mouth from viewers, and some insanely catchy pop songs in its soundtrack, the film has very rarely not been in the top 3 on both the U.S. and global Netflix charts the last three months. While it has been replaced several times, most recently by new movies such as Liam Neeson’s Ice Road: Vengeance and 28 Years Later, as well as Dwayne Johnson’s 2015 action-disaster movie San Andreas, these movies have only managed to fend off the demon fighters for a matter of days before Netflix’s biggest ever movie reclaimed it crown.
If you somehow missed KPop Demon Hunters, the story revolves around Korean pop trio, HUNTR/X, which is made up of your regular idolized K-Pop stars Rumi, Mira, and Zoey. However, when the girls aren’t selling out arenas, they are channeling magic music to slay demons and keep the monsters trapped in their own world. While this sounds like it has the potential to be like many other movies, the combination of a killer script, earworm music tracks, and flawless animation made KPop Demon Hunters the summer blockbuster that never was.
Why Did ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Not Become a Theatrical Blockbuster?
In a year when everyone was focused on Superman, The Fantastic Four: First Steps and several other highly publicized and marketed summer movies, Sony Pictures could have ruled the box office with KPop Demon Hunters. The movie was made by Sony, but became part of a package sold off to Netflix for a reportedly cut-down rate compared to the $100 million it is said to have cost to make. For that reason, rather than becoming a box office juggernaut, the film became the biggest Netflix movie of all time, surpassing 300 million views within its first 90 days.
The film did, however, get its moment to shine in cinemas thanks to a sing-along version of the movie being released in theaters for one weekend only. In its two-day release, the film landed a $40 million-plus haul, technically topping the U.S. box office, but being unable to be confirmed as such due to Netflix not revealing the box office numbers of their limited cinema releases. All the while, the original movie continued to retain its place at the top of the streaming charts, and subsequently, both movies have never left the Top 10.
KPop Demon Hunters has also been dominating the music charts, with lead single “Golden” hitting the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and the U.K. singles chart for weeks on end. This has been helped along greatly by snippets of this and several other songs constantly popping up on TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
Sony and Netflix have already revealed that talk of a sequel is already ongoing, and a reported short film set in the universe is reportedly already done and ready to be released. This means that even before KPop Demon Hunters takes its final bow and sinks from the chart, its next stage of world domination is already on the way. It seems that from here, the only place to go is up, up up.
- Release Date
-
June 20, 2025
- Runtime
-
96 minutes
- Director
-
Chris Appelhans, Maggie Kang
- Writers
-
Hannah McMechan, Chris Appelhans, Maggie Kang, Danya Jimenez
- Producers
-
Aron Warner
