KPop Demon Hunters creator reveals movie originally had nothing to do with K-pop — and her though...

&34;But the idea needed something else. It just wasn't enough,&34; codirector Maggie Kang recalled. KPop Demon Hunters creator reveals movie originally had noth

"But the idea needed something else. It just wasn't enough," co-director Maggie Kang recalled.

KPop Demon Hunters creator reveals movie originally had nothing to do with K-pop — and her thoughts on sequels

"But the idea needed something else. It just wasn't enough," co-director Maggie Kang recalled.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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September 24, 2025 6:29 p.m. ET

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Zoey (Ji-young Yoo), Rumi (Arden Cho), and Mira (May Hong) in 'KPop Demon Hunters'. Credit:

*KPop Demon Hunters* wasn't always envisioned as a musical.

Maggie Kang, who co-wrote and co-directed the animated Netflix hit, spoke about the film's development process at the Busan International Film Festival on Saturday, noting that the movie looked very different when she began conceptualizing it.

Kang said that she "always wanted to see Korean represented onscreen," and originally began brainstorming the project as a straightforward fantasy film that draws from Korean mythology.

"The idea of demons naturally led to demon hunters, a group of really incredible women who fight demons," the filmmaker said at the festival. "But the idea needed something else. It just wasn't enough."

Maggie Kang at the 2025 Busan International Film Festival.

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty

The infusion of K-pop into the movie helped the filmmakers explore new dimensions in the story, which follows a trio of young pop stars who protect the world from demons through the power of song.

"The movie instantly became larger in scale," Kang recalled. "It became a musical, and there was just more spectacle."**

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The film's trio of singers, HUNTR/X, use their magical music to create a spiritual barrier, the Honmoon, that keeps hordes of demons at bay. Kang explained that using music to battle demons resembles a practice from Korean history.

"We have this amazing tradition, which is the mudang," the filmmaker said. "It's Korean shamanism. So the idea of using music to, you know, and song to ward off demons. This is what the mudang did."

'KPop Demon Hunters'.

Kang previously spoke with ** about fusing the film's fantasy elements with music. "It was conceived as a demon hunter thing with a badass group of girls who fight demons, because demon hunting is usually a side job that's done in secret," she explained. "It was like, 'What is their day job?' And K-pop was another thing that was uniquely Korean and popular. It was like the boom of BTS at the time, which was six or seven years ago. And that was the last ingredient that was added in, and it just kind of opened it up."

The director also noted that she hoped to find "a different light" in which she could showcase women with superpowers. "I just wanted to see something different from the Marvel female superheroes that were just sexy and cool and badass," Kang reflected. "Yeah, we get that. But I also wanted to see girls who, I don't know, got potbellies and burped and were crass and silly and fun, because that's really what I am."

At the festival, Kang also said that she's received "no official word" on a sequel to the movie, but she and her collaborators remain "excited for the possibilities of more stories."

The filmmaker recently told EW that she hopes that elements that were cut from the first *KPop Demon Hunters* might be able to resurface in a sequel.

"We were trying to do a non-origin origin story with a concept that's brand new to people," she said. "What is it about these girls that brought them into HUNTR/X and made them demon hunters? What is each of their backstory? How did they get chosen? What is that journey like?"

'KPop Demon Hunters'.

Unfortunately, she reflected, "There was really not a space for the movie to show all that. So we really had to make these choices of what is essential to the story, and that is the information that we will show."

Kang said that it was difficult to axe that material from the film, but ultimately knew it was the right decision. "We kept getting asked: 'Please show us this.' 'I think the audience is going to want to know this or that,'" the director said. "We just made decisions to be like, 'Nope, that is not essential to this story for this movie, and maybe that can be shown some other time.'"

If *KPop Demon Hunters* gets the franchise treatment, Kang teased, "Then we can reveal more of that backstory."

*KPop Demon Hunters* is streaming on Netflix.**

*Reporting by Nick Romano.***

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Source: "EW Movies"

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