{"id":171513,"date":"2025-08-24T10:59:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T10:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/171513\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T10:59:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T10:59:23","slug":"what-its-like-to-attend-a-kpop-demon-hunters-sing-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/171513\/","title":{"rendered":"What It’s Like to Attend a ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Sing-Along"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNow here\u2019s a first: Two months after dropping \u201cKPop Demon Hunters<\/a>\u201d on Netflix, the streamer is putting the animated hit in theaters \u2014 and not just the cursory Oscar-qualifying run its prestige titles get in New York and Los Angeles. This one is going wide, in more than 1,700 venues, for karaoke-captioned screenings in which audience participation is encouraged.<\/p>\n

\n\tDress up! Sing along! Give in to the catchy choreography \u2026 that\u2019s how it\u2019s done done done!<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve been on the Huntr\/x train since the beginning<\/a> and bought tickets to the first screening of the day at Los Angeles\u2019 Alamo Drafthouse theater, where the house was packed with family audiences. They weren\u2019t just in it for the songs either, but gleefully recited most of the dialogue, too. These kids knew the movie by heart, having watched it countless times at home, and now their parents were spending close to $100 to experience it on the big screen.<\/p>\n

\n\tNext week, the one-of-a-kind cultural phenomenon \u2014 in which a trio of Korean pop stars use the positive energy their songs generate to keep soul-sucking ghouls at bay, until evil demons form a rival boy band to steal their fans \u2014 is set to become Netflix\u2019s most-watched movie. Clearly, this exclusive two-day event was willed into existence by popular demand, just as any extension or encore Netflix agrees to would also be.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo the best of my knowledge, nobody was begging Netflix to release a sing-along version of Guillermo del Toro\u2019s \u201cPinocchio\u201d three years ago (much less \u201cEmilia P\u00e9rez,\u201d back when Netflix was treating that film like an Oscar frontrunner). And even though purists wanted to see Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n\u2019s \u201cRoma\u201d and Martin Scorsese\u2019s \u201cThe Irishman\u201d in theaters, those movies didn\u2019t sell out nearly as quickly as \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d shows did when Netflix announced its plan last week.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film is all about fandom, and this unprecedented move from the streaming-first media company suggests that Netflix recognized that the film\u2019s millions-strong audience were craving the collective experience that only cinemas can provide.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaybe theaters aren\u2019t quite as obsolete as Ted Sarandos would have us believe<\/a>. Nor is this singular event likely to change how Netflix does business.<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, it\u2019s important to understand what \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d is. Produced by Sony Pictures Animation (the studio behind \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse\u201d and \u201cThe Mitchells vs. the Machines\u201d), the cleverly executed, computer-animated feature looks every bit as slick as the latest releases from Pixar and DreamWorks \u2026 which is to say, it could\u2019ve easily supported a big-screen release in the first place.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut that would\u2019ve meant spending millions of marketing dollars, just to let audiences know of the movie\u2019s existence, in a marketplace where opening weekend makes all the difference and films get chased off screen before they\u2019ve had time to build a following. (That\u2019s one reason Sony started selling its animated features to Netflix, which came to the rescue of \u201cWish Dragon,\u201d from \u201cKPop\u201d co-director Chris Applehans, amid the pandemic.)<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix famously keeps streaming numbers to itself, but it\u2019s safe to say that \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d would not have been nearly the same phenom had it gone the traditional theatrical route. This way, the movie benefited from word of mouth, aggregating more viewers as early adopters told their friends to check it out. That\u2019s a luxury streaming releases have. Rrremember \u201cRRR,\u201d the gonzo Tollywood movie that barely made a ripple in theaters, but gained a following on Netflix?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe best analogy here could be Disney\u2019s animated \u201cEncanto,\u201d which did OK business in theaters (this was 2021, when windows were still compressed in response to the pandemic), but really took off when it hit Disney+ 30 days. Only then did the song \u201cWe Don\u2019t Talk About Bruno\u201d blow up with a very similar demographic.<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps the late shows will draw a crowd of older fans, though I loved sitting through the movie with a room full of chatty kids, one of whom was named Zoey (like the eager-to-please Huntr\/x rapper, who fights demons with a glowing three-pronged dagger). Zoey and her friends seemed tickled any time her name was spoken.<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in June, before the film was released, I asked my friendly neighborhood Netflix reps if there was any way to see \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d on the big screen. They declined. (I\u2019d also hoped it might screen at the Annecy Animation Festival, which unspooled the week prior in France, but for some reason, they brought \u201cFixed\u201d instead.) I can\u2019t be alone in preferring to watch movies in a theater, although Netflix does their best to make that difficult for audiences.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Los Angeles, that meant opening them at the Bay, the upscale Pacific Palisades theater that shuttered amid the wildfires earlier this year \u2014 quite the shlep to watch Zack Snyder\u2019s \u201cRebel Moon\u201d (clearly better on the big screen) or the latest Adam Sandler movie. Now they sprinkle them into art-houses around town, doing what feels like the bare minimum to meet contractual obligations and Academy Awards rules.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith \u201cKPop Demon Hunters,\u201d they opened in at least two dozen Los Angeles theaters, including major chains like Regal and Cinemark \u2014 more than doubling the number of screens the studio offered \u201cGlass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery\u201d in 2022. But the data-driven company also knew what they had in this case (what every studio wants): a sure thing.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the moment, three of the film\u2019s original songs \u2014 \u201cGolden,\u201d \u201cYour Idol\u201d and \u201cSoda Pop\u201d \u2014 sit among the top 10 of Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 chart. And judging by the reaction in the room, \u201cTakedown\u201d (which TWICE sings over the end credits, and the audience couldn\u2019t resist echoing) could soon join their ranks.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix has a full slate of big-screen-worthy movies coming this fall, including Sundance marvel \u201cTrain Dreams,\u201d Guillermo del Toro\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein\u201d and Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s \u201cA House of Dynamite,\u201d but however many millions \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d earns this weekend, that doesn\u2019t mean the streamer will rush to open those films wide.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo repeat this experiment, they\u2019d need another proven success with a built-in audience willing to pay to rewatch a film they first saw on streaming. Netflix has the numbers to indicate what time of year certain movies are popular. Maybe a Christmas release of last year\u2019s \u201cCarry On\u201d could work.<\/p>\n

\n\tOr maybe this is a unicorn event for which we should simply be grateful: For two days only, nonsubscribers can see \u201cKPop Demon Hunters,\u201d surrounded by singing groupies whose enthusiasm willed the streaming phenomenon onto the big screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now here\u2019s a first: Two months after dropping \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d on Netflix, the streamer is putting the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":171514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,30075,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-171513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-kpop-demon-hunters","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115083396113428866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}