{"id":94287,"date":"2025-08-24T20:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/94287\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T20:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:36:07","slug":"netflix-summons-its-first-box-office-win-with-kpop-demon-hunters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/94287\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix summons its first box office win with KPop Demon Hunters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Netflix movie has breached containment.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/kpop-demon-hunters-might-win-weekend-box-office\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> As predicted<\/a>, KPop Demon Hunters, the animated musical that premiered two months ago on the streamer and has since become its second-most-watched movie ever, is expected to become Netflix\u2019s first number one at the box office. Scooping up an estimated $18 million from two days of sing-along screenings,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-numbers.com\/weekend-box-office-chart\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> per The Numbers<\/a>, KPop Demon Hunters is doing something Netflix has long avoided: collecting money from consumers for a specific product. Again, we must note that these are estimates. KPop Demon Hunters was only a Saturday-Sunday specialty release, so its Sunday take has yet to be determined, as it has not yet happened.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike<a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/happy-gilmore-2-review\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Happy Gilmore 2<\/a> and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/gray-man-review-ryan-gosling-netflix-anthony-joe-russo-1849169355\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> numerous other<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/millie-bobby-brown-enola-holmes-3-in-pr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> movies<\/a> that Netflix reports monster viewership data on, KPop Demon Hunters exists outside the platform. Three of its earworms, \u201cGolden,\u201d \u201cYour Idol,\u201d and \u201cSoda Pop,\u201d charted on Billboard\u2018s top 10 last week.\u00a0It makes sense that Demon Hunters would break out of Netflix\u2019s reality distortion field and appear in actual culture, since Netflix didn\u2019t make it. In 2021, Sony made the movie for Netflix to release under a \u201c\u2018direct-to-platform\u2019 arrangement,\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/puck.news\/why-did-kpop-demon-hunters-go-straight-to-streaming\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> per Puck<\/a>, a move made around the height of the pandemic and before theaters started reopening en masse. But who\u2019s to say if Demon Hunters would\u2019ve been a hit without the two months on Netflix preceding these specialty screenings? It certainly shows that some audiences are willing to indulge in a theater ticket despite having seen the movie numerous times on Netflix. The sing-alongs were only playing on 1,700 screens, making it the rare instance of fans putting in work to see a Netflix release, as opposed to settling for whatever\u2019s on because they\u2019re already pretty much finished with their dinner anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Weapons held up this weekend strongly. Dropping a modest 36%, Zach Cregger\u2019s horror film Naruto ran to another $15.6 million, bringing its domestic total to $115 million. Additionally, Freakier Friday kept on chugging along with $9.2 million for the weekend. Jamie Lee Curtis must be feeling good that her Lindsay Lohan reclamation project gave the former Mean Girl her biggest hit since Mean Girls and proved Curtis\u2019 comments about<a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/harrison-ford-marvel-lore-jamie-lee-curtis-dont-understand\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> the MCU last summer correct<\/a>. Indeed, Marvel must be in its \u201cbad\u201d phase, as evidenced by another \u201cFF,\u201d Fantastic Four: First Steps, which made $5.9 million, continuing its disappointing box office stretch for Disney.<\/p>\n<p>A little farther down the top 10, the second part of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke\u2019s \u201clesbian B-movie trilogy,\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/honey-dont-review\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Honey Don\u2019t<\/a>, made about $3 million on 1,300 screens. The movie may be causing critics to say, \u201cHoney, don\u2019t,\u201d toward the prospect of he couple completing their trilogy, but the film scored the highest per-screen average of any movie outside the top three. Meanwhile, America, once again, gave a hard pass on what the rest of the world thinks is cool. The highest-grossing animated movie of all time,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/ne-zha-2-review\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Ne Zha II<\/a>, landed with a thud in America. The English dub of the chaotic orb-chasing epic added $1.5 million in the United States to its $2 billion global take and failed to break into the top 10. Proving America prefers subs over dubs, the subtitled Ne Zha II grossed $17 million during a three-week run in February. Maybe it should\u2019ve hit streaming first?<\/p>\n<p>                    <a class=\"auto cell copy-container noimage\" href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/kpop-demon-hunters-might-win-weekend-box-office\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Streaming mega-hit KPop Demon Hunters might somehow wind up winning the weekend box office<\/a><a class=\"auto cell copy-container noimage\" href=\"https:\/\/www.avclub.com\/august-17-2025-weekend-box-office-weapons-nobody-2-freakier-friday\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Weapons defends box office top spot from Nobody 2 and Freakier Friday<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the full top 10:<\/p>\n<p>1) KPop Demon Hunter Sing-Along Event<\/p>\n<p>2) Weapons<\/p>\n<p>3) Freakier Friday<\/p>\n<p>4) The Fantastic Four: First Steps<\/p>\n<p>5) The Bad Guys 2<\/p>\n<p>6) Nobody 2<\/p>\n<p>7) Superman<\/p>\n<p>8) Honey Don\u2019t<\/p>\n<p>9) The Naked Gun<\/p>\n<p>10) Jurassic World Rebirth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Netflix movie has breached containment. As predicted, KPop Demon Hunters, the animated musical that premiered two months&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-94287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}