The most successful movie of 2025 isn’t a comic book movie; it’s animated, and it’s not in theaters. KPop Demon Hunters has been the number one worldwide film on Netflix for over two months, refusing to let go of the number one spot ever since its June 20 debut. It’s not only Netflix’s biggest win of the year, eclipsing the return of Wednesday, but it’s crossed over to make Billboard music history, a sequel is in the works, and despite the budget of $100 million, it’s still less than a season of Stranger Things and both of Zach Snyder’s Rebel Moon flops.
KPop Demon Hunters was going to be a success; that there was any doubt about it is another sign that Sony, the studio that received the initial pitch, keeps stepping on rakes. I described the plot to a friend who had never seen it as “a K-pop girl group is secretly tasked with protecting Earth from demons, and their rivals are a boy band who are secretly demons.” His response was, “That’s a license to print money.” And it is.
Between the rise of Korean culture across the globe and the mainstream success of anime in the West (though KPop Demon Hunters is not anime, it’s a Western production), it’s the perfect movie at the perfect time. The simple plot is taken to new heights thanks to the incredibly catchy songs throughout, including “Golden,” performed by EJAE, Audrey Nuna & REI AMI, which made history by ascending to the top spot on the Billboard charts, making the real-life HUNTR/X the first girl group to claim the top spot since Destiny’s Child.
Two other songs, performed on the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack by the demonic Saja Boys, “Your Idol” and “Soda Pop,” are also in the Billboard Top Ten. The streaming hits soundtrack has outperformed Justin Bieber’s latest album and is running neck and neck with Morgan Wallen. The music has been so wildly successful that the movie is defying Netflix’s standard modus operandi and is in theaters, a feat that not even Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore 2 could pull off.
Music is at the heart of KPop Demon Hunters
The Sing Along version of KPop Demon Hunters hit theaters during an exceptionally weak August weekend, earning an estimated $10 million on Saturday, August 23, enough to make it the top film of the weekend. It’s no wonder that the directors and co-creators, Maggie Kang (who previously did storyboard animation for Dreamworks movies, including Puss in Boots: The Last Wish) and Chris Appelhans (another animation veteran who was the illustrator for Coraline), are already working on developing the 100-minute film into a multi-media franchise.
KPop Demon Hunters is already Netflix’s most successful English-language film in history, approaching 200 million views since its debut, crushing Zach Snyder’s Rebel Moon, destroying Glass Onion, and managing to outperform every single Adam Sandler comedy on the streamer, but it’s also the beginning. The company’s co-production deal with Sony includes rights to every sequel, so while it’s a small win for the movie studio, it pales in comparison to the success they’d have had if they had footed the production bill themselves.
The worldwide success of KPop Demon Hunters has reached the point that mainstream media is running articles about the film’s explosive popularity and overnight obsessive fandom. It’s also another sign that creatives don’t have to launch their projects in theaters to become successful, a topic that has been discussed to death by the media for over a decade now, but that grim reality is closer than we realize.
KPop Demon Hunters is currently streaming exclusively on Netflix.