‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Crushed By Netflix Rival In New Analysis

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ is on track to become Netflix’s most-watched movie of all time ©2025 Netflix

NETFLIX

Hit movies don’t come much more unexpected than KPop Demon Hunters. The animated Netflix film follows a Korean girl band who hunt down supernatural threats in their spare time bringing them into conflict with a rival boy band formed from demons.

Against all the odds, it has smashed record after record and last month became the most-watched original animated film in Netflix history with a massive 184.6 million views since it was released on June 20.

Indeed, it is so popular that it is now the second most-popular movie of any kind on the streaming platform. It is soon expected to pass Red Notice, the 2021 heist comedy starring Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson. That has 46.3 million more views but resoundingly vanquishes the demon hunters in another way. Ironically it highlights how quickly KPop Demon Hunters took the world by storm.

Saying that the animated adventure was an overnight success is no exaggeration. Remarkably, over the first three months of this year not a single article was written about the movie according to data from Factiva, a search engine owned by Dow Jones which includes content from 33,000 news, data and information sources in 32 languages.

That tally then rose to a paltry 16 reports in April and 333 in May. It didn’t even fare much better in the month of its release as only 384 articles were written about KPop Demon Hunters in June. In contrast, the pulling power of Gadot, Reynolds and Johnson put Red Notice on the media’s radar long before the film dropped on the streamer in November 2021.

According to Factiva, 604 articles mentioned Red Notice during October 2021 with that number rising nearly five times to 2,874 when it was released the following month. However, dark clouds quickly gathered as the reviews rolled in.

Red Notice got an average critics rating of just 37% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes which led to a rapid decline in its media coverage. It fell by more than half to 1,165 in the month after its release and collapsed again to 895 in January 2022. Audiences were much more merciful and gave the movie an average of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes which explains why it soared up the Netflix rankings and became its most-watched movie within just 11 days.

KPop Demon Hunters immediately had a magic touch on both critics and audiences and there was good reason for this. Although the characters speak English, it obviously had a natural fanbase in Asia, especially as it leaves no stone unturned in its depiction of K-pop culture. Some scenes are set at fan signing events and concerts awash with colorful light sticks and placards. They feature perfectly synchronised dance set-pieces but that’s just the start.

The film’s dazzling animation style, slick action sequences and humour gave it an instant appeal to western audiences, especially as it has heart-warmings central themes of friendship, trust, self-discovery and staying true to your identity. The attention to detail won over critics who gave it an average of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences were almost as enthusiastic awarding it 91% which explains why its views surged. So too did its media exposure as the chart below shows.

During the month of its release, the number of articles about KPop Demon Hunters increased nearly four-fold to 1,394. Unlike Red Notice, it hardly fell off in the following month as 1,281 articles have already been written about it so far in August.

It hasn’t just benefitted from reviews driven by word of mouth but from music industry recognition. Such was its quest for authenticity that Sony Pictures Animation, which produced the picture, enlisted the help of Teddy Park, known for his work with Blackpink, and Grammy-winning German song-writer Michel Lindgren Schulz, who has worked with K-pop groups BTS and TWICE.

It has led to several tracks from the film’s soundtrack being featured on the Billboard Hot 100 and rising to the top of Spotify’s US chart. All this has led to the film being mentioned in 3,407 articles over the past year.

This still pales in comparison to the 8,120 articles mentioning Red Notice over the year to two months after its release. However, given its A List cast, it is likely that Red Notice cost much more to make than KPop Demon Hunters. Both have had a similar number of views on Netflix which is a stark reminder that studios don’t need big names and big budgets to succeed. Finding a popular niche is enough and Netflix’s diverse portfolio is a dream ticket in that respect.

Unsurprisingly, it is capitalizing on the success of KPop Demon Hunters and is developing two animated sequels as well as a live action remake, an animated TV series and even a stage musical. Time will tell if they cast as powerful a spell as the original.