Music Serves Hunt In 'KPop: Demon Hunters' Trailer

Sony Pictures Animation’s first film in two years is ready to rock out in a week and a half on Netflix

It has been two years since Sony Pictures Animation has released any movie, with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse having been released on June 2, 2023. While they’re not quite back in theaters, the journey starts this summer with two Netflix releases: KPop Demon Hunters on June 20, and Fixed on August 13. The former had its trailer released on May 22.

When K-pop superstar group Huntrix, consisting of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey, aren’t selling out stadiums, they’re using their secret identities as demon hunters to protect their fans from ever-present supernatural danger, as their music creates a mystical shield that prevents the demonic realm from invading Earth. Together, they must face their biggest threat: an irresistible rival boy band of demons in disguise called the Saja Boys. Rumi is voiced by Arden Cho, Mira by May Hong and Zoey by Ji-young Yoo, while Ahn Hyo-seop is Jinu, the leader of that demonic rival boy band whose secret is described as “hellacious”: After millennia worth of failing to steal human souls and feed them to their hellish overlord, the demons have a plan: as the Saja Boys, steal Huntrix's fans (and their souls) out from under them. The film also features the voices of Yunjin Kim, Joel Kim Booster, Liza Koshy, Daniel Dae Kim, Ken Jeong and Byung Hun Lee. It is directed by Maggie Kang, who also provided the story, and Chris Appelhans, featuring a script by Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan, and the directors. Kang tells that her goal was “to see Korean people on film in animation. So it actually started off as just a demon hunter project where I wanted to showcase Korean demons. Because demon hunting is usually a side job that's done in secret, it was like, what is their day job?" Meanwhile Appelhans remarked on the grimness of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it tied in. "You had BTS on the rise, and they were doing these virtual concerts. It was affirming this feeling that music, in its own weird way, is a counterweight to darkness and bad stuff."

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"I just wanted to see something different from the Marvel female superheroes that were just sexy and cool and badass," Kang elaborates even further. "But I also wanted to see girls who had potbellies and burped and were crass and silly and fun, because that's really what I am. So I just wanted to create something that encompassed all of those elements." She even admits, to a bit of embarrassment, that she didn’t even realize she produced a full blown musical. "I don't know why. I just thought that it was going to be a great pop soundtrack. When that started to happen, I was deathly scared of how we were going to pull this off."

Each member of Huntrix also got to say something, with Cho discussing powerhouse vocalist Rumi as "the older sister" of the group. "She wants to encourage the girls to, obviously, be awesome rock stars and hunt the demons while covering this deep, dark secret and trying to overcome all of her struggles. It was a challenge finding the perfect balance between being grounded and real and honest and vulnerable, especially because Rumi has so many of those moments. I feel like there were a lot of different layers to her.”

Mira is more of a tomboy, and unrelatedly armed with a supernatural woldo (or polearm), according to Hong. "She's tough as f---, I like that, but also so sensitive and so vulnerable. I do think I've been perceived as someone who's harder on the outside than I actually am with loved ones, and so it resonated with me." Yoo meanwhile says the main thing with Zoey, the rapper of the group, is "she's really energetic, which is fun and very lovable, but it's really tiring. A lot of it was just me trying to get as much energy as possible stored up in my system so that I could go into the booth and give that much energy to her voice, which is a ton of fun, but definitely a new kind of stamina challenge for me."

KPop Demon Hunters releases June 20 on Netflix. Be the next of 2.6 million views below.

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Source: Entertainment Weekly