The Story Behind Netflix’s Most Popular Film Ever

- I don't know if you tell him everyone's hot. That'll work, right? 'Cause everyone's hot. So watch it, galloway. (upbeat music)

- Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. We today are going up, up, up, up.

“It goes without saying that K-pop demon hunters”

is a major win for Hollywood and otherwise disappointing year. But I don't think many people fully realize

what a cultural and critical juggernaut

the animated film is and continues to be. K-pop demon hunters is Netflix's most popular title ever, meaning movie or show, with around a half a billion views. Four songs from the film crack the top 10

on Billboard's hot 100 chart at the same time. The first time that's ever happened for a movie soundtrack. The film's lead song, which I just referenced, gold and spent eight weeks at the top of the charts.

It was the first number one hit for any K-pop girl group real or animated. On top of that, the movie won awards at the Grammys, the Golden Globes and the critics choice awards.

Now, it's up for two Academy Awards, next month's Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.

“If they don't win both, I'm going to storm the Oscars.”

My guests today are the film's two directors,

Chris Applehands and Maggie King. From Maggie K-pop demon hunters also happens to be her directorial debut of a movie she conceived. For a few people who still haven't seen the movie, Scott Galloway, the plot centers on a K-pop girl group

called Huntrix, the trio are mega stars, but that's just their day job, their real job is to do battle with a shadowy underworld of demons, looking to attack their fans in the form of a rival. Boy band, the Saga Boys, oh, the Saga Boys.

There's so many reasons K-pop demon hunters has become a massive hat, but it's very heart. It is just a story. It's a really great story of people overcoming odds. And that is a common thing through many stories.

Not all of them do it as beautifully as they do with the music and the animation is gorgeous. I think the message that, probably, which it take away from their success is that originality and creativity

still went out over everything else.

“And the endless amount of sequels, the endless amount”

of brain dead AI crap that they're gonna throw at us does not take the place of a great story. And let me say, my kids love this movie. It is supplanted in my home, frozen and Moana, rather significantly.

All right, let's get to my interview with Maggie and Chris. I'm very excited about this as a parent as someone who love the movie as a person. We have some special expert questions today for my two kids, Clara and Solomon,

who are huge fans of the movies. They are so excited. I'm doing this. They're totally uninterested in my podcast career, but they're totally interested in this.

So stick around, get ready to have golden, stuck in your head for the rest of the day, and you'll be lucky for it. It's a wonderful song. - Support for this show comes from Indeed.

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So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoO.com. Chris Applehands and Maggie Kang. Thanks for coming on on and congratulations

on the films two Oscar nominations. - Thank you. - Thank you. So I want to talk about a lot of stuff, especially the business, but it's been a wild few months for the two of you.

And you're about to cap it all off by heading as I said to the Academy Awards next month. I know you've talked about this, but reflect on the film's monster success. There's no way anybody expected this.

But I've talked to people from Netflix. They certainly didn't.

But first Maggie and then Chris.

- Yeah, I mean, you can't really predict anything like this. But I do think that we were very confident with what we had. We really loved a film when we finished it. And loved it all the way through from the very beginning.

And really had high hopes that an audience would find it and if they did, that they would love it, just as much as we did. And luckily it did.

“And I think we're still as a business trying to figure out”

how this new generation of audience is absorbing content. And to have a movie like this land on a platform like Netflix where you're able to go global instantly. You're in like 98 countries. It's dubbed in like 40 something languages.

And the power of that is kind of undeniable. And there's nothing really like it. And then this movie just kind of was carried by the fans. They found it immediately. And it wasn't a large group of people that I found it.

But when they found it, the passion for it was just so intense, they were creating content for Instagram and socials, almost immediately. I remember watching it on midnight. And it was just, as I was watching, there was content being created. So there's like this power of this generation

that is content creators that is able to spread the word, spread the word, it's not that they actually are taking your content and then working with it. So go ahead, Chris, next. No, I mean, those were the big epiphanies.

I think that the fact that, I guess, we really wanted to make something new. And I think, again, it's audiences telling business like, we would like that, we would like new stuff. We mashed up influences from manga and anime and K dramas

and Kurosawa and really tried to make something that we wanted to see an animation that hadn't been seen before. And I think it's just become the recurring theme of all audiences that they are hungry for that. They're so hungry for original things.

Right, original. Yeah, that dovetails with the power of word of mouth. I think it's really the marketing of word of mouth

is as powerful as any formal campaign.

And you'd see that on TikTok. That was really interesting. There'd be a fan made homage video about one of the throughlines in the story. And it would have a trillion likes and a bunch of great comments.

And then there would be one even put out by Netflix, like a nicely done version. But just the fact that it was coming from sort of the corporate account, there was a different relationship to a more skepticism when it's made by a fan saying,

this is why I love this movie. And this is me putting my own time and energy into it. That has its own form of appeal in this age of marketing saturation that I think is kind of amazing. So direct to streaming was a good thing for you

as opposed to a theatrical release first, Maggie. You know, I think so, when we got the green light, it was during COVID times. So everything was unsure anyway. And you know, just the idea of theaters.

So especially for me, being a first-time director,

being able to create something-- it got something made that's original in this climate where originals are not really made. It was just, yeah, let's do this. Let's just make a movie.

I was just grateful for that opportunity. And our movie was different because it came out. It struck success with an audience. And then we had a theatrical for a weekend. Yeah.

So I think we're trying to figure out, like, there's different ways that a different films need, like just, you know, where the land.

“And maybe that's what we're learning as an industry.”

Like how to get these things out there. Yeah, I do think people, the reason it worked so well in the theater is later is because people watched it and it loved it and then wanted to experience it with people. Yes, right.

Because it's totally different experience. It was like going to a concert and experiencing the movie

which was, I mean, I can't imagine going to a theater and watching my film with an audience who hasn't seen it. Right, right. I feel like that would be terrifying. But this was a great experience because you're like,

oh, wow, people love this. And it's community and they're going there to enjoy it on a different level. And they want to meet each other. Yes, we had a similar experience with a pivot tour.

They could care less about us. They wanted to see each other and talk about us, which was great. But go ahead, Chris.

“I think what I realized at the theatrical show”

and it was like, there is a, I think, a desire. And I know, I'm an agnostic person.

I don't go to church, I never did.

There's a real desire. I think culturally for collective experiences, which concerts are and stories are. It's a kind of reason to gather and celebrate. Especially with the story, too, there's often a value statement

that you're sharing and celebrating. And I feel like that it occurred to me being in the theater and enjoying the movie in this kind of, you know, almost euphoric state that that's something that I think we're really drawn to as humans.

And at least for me as it's sort of non-turge-going person. I was like, I really love this feeling of being connected by a story and connected by music and I think it's, there's a shortage of it in our present day. And I wonder if that's part of why movies meet as much as they do

to us and we seek the map. Or they can't, right? Or they can't. Or they can't. So for people that are on the broad plot,

you have this K-pop girl group, Hunterx. It's three members at this point, Rumi Zoey and Mira. They're the latest demon hunting trio in a long line of them. But spoiler, Rumi is part demon herself and her friends don't know. And through that, you're exploring themes of self-acceptance

and overcoming cultural pressures. These are really heavy themes. So the movie doesn't feel heavy. Let's talk about striking that balance. Because, you know, as, let me tell you, it's a gay person.

I heard gay.

“Like, I think anyone who feels other has that feeling”

of fear of being found. I'd love each of you to talk about that, Maggie. Yeah, you know, we talked about that kind of story a lot. And in so many different things, we talked a lot about addiction. We talked a lot about, yes, being kind of the other,

like immigrant story. And we wanted to challenge ourselves with the storytelling.

The way that Chris and I bonded, a storytellers first,

is through our love of director Bongjun Hose films, especially the host in that film. I remember the first time watching it. I was blown away at how he was able to just juggle different tones.

There's a scene where the family is grieving the loss of a child and they're crying. And then the next moment, it just becomes just like physical comedy thing. We're one brother, like jump kicks another one,

and they fall to the ground, and they're crying. And Justin does deep sorrow, but it's very comical. And I had no idea that that could work, but it did. And director Park Chanuk does that as well in his films. And so we wanted to try that with this.

And especially because we were dealing with very dark themes. And one of the scenes that we really like, and it actually came later, because we felt like-- and this is the couch couch house scene, very early in the movie. And we were about to get into Rumi's backstory

of being a part demon and just kind of burden that she has to start secret that she's keeping from her friends. And because we were going right into that, we wanted to kind of show the audience like, what is Rumi fighting for?

What do we want for Rumi? And it's just kind of silliness, just being able to be silly with her girlfriends and just that intimacy. That's the thing that she really, really wants,

and what we want for her. And so we added the scene where Rumi is coming up from the couch with the silly face and offering up the costumes for the new single. And that was our way of kind of playing with tone.

Let's keep it light, but also be dramatic on the other side. And I'm a true believer of, like, I love comedy. But I also feel like the more comic you can go on one end, the more dramatic you can go on the other end.

So we've always tried to strike that balance in this movie.

Yeah.

“- Chris? - Yeah, I think that speaks very much”

to my favorite quote about movies, which is true foes saying the great movie is true sensed spectacle. And I feel like that was part of our strategy. Really is the word to keep up demoners.

They like obviously invite the spectacle is so obvious. And sort of fun, and you're doing that, and you're just going a thousand miles an hour, and you're entertaining and being funny and glamorous.

that are going to pay off later, that. But don't feel like homework and don't feel, you know, a dantic or anything. I grew up in a small town in Idaho, and I had several friends who, to keep it vague,

they were in the closet, and they were part of Mormon families. And they went through a very similar experience to roomy in terms of, you know, basically realizing, fundamentally, they had to survive the experience of being told

that the way you are is not worthy of love. That's such an incredible thing. And it was odd because they had loving parents in a lot of ways, but that love was at the very end of the day, it was conditional, and so--

Absolutely. I watched them, and there early 20s, they both went right up to the edge, just like Rumi does, of thinking the best thing would be not to exist anymore.

And then I think what I really admire about them is that they came to terms with the fact

that they were never going to get the love they deserved there,

and they went out and found it somewhere else. And that's what Rumi does. Yeah, that's off in the case. And then everyone goes to the book of Mormon and laughs. Exactly.

Yeah. There's a lot of Mormons go to that, just to say, you know. So the song "Golden" is as much of a success as the film itself, is up for best original song and the upcoming Academy Awards.

Maggie, an interview last fall, you said "Golden" was the last track you figured out, and it was very hard to write. You didn't know what the song needed to be to serve the story.

“So talk about what was the key to unlock it,”

and how did you figure it out? Yeah, you know, through the writing process and just developing the film, we got a lot of feedback from, especially from the studio that, you know, we need to know more about the characters

in order to really be on the journey with them. And it's funny because we were like, oh, well, we know, but we realized, well, the audience doesn't know. And so we need to give them a little bit of each of their original story where they come from.

And because the movie is a non-origin story, and we were very adamant about telling a non-origin story, we had to kind of feed the audience a little bit of information here and there through flashbacks and such.

And because the first act is so tight,

we really couldn't find places to do that. We tried scenes where the girls meet on the island to train, like as youngsters, and it's just the movie just kept rejecting it. It just didn't want those scenes.

“And so writing the golden song, I think,”

what really kind of unlocked it for us is, we, also, we were not convinced that we were making a musical, for the very long time, but finally realized through our executive music producer, E.E.E. and Eisenhower, who comes from working on Broadway shows

and has a very great, like, just writing sense through music. And he's like, you guys need on, I want song. Every Disney princess movie has one. And yeah. And we realized that we did, and so golden became that.

But then we realized that through the song, we could also just sprinkle in a little bit of the backstory of the girls. And so rather than show it, rather than show it. - Yeah. - The scene.

Which you have, did you make those? - Yes, we did, we did cuts with storyboards,

but we'd never fully produced them.

And so we would make these, with every song, we would make these, like, very long, very dry, just literal documents for our songwriters. And we would write, with Mira, she comes from a family, a lot of, you know, like, an educated background,

but she's kind of the black sheep of the family. She's different from the rest of them. She's wild, she's spontaneous, she can be aggressive. And that kind of paragraph is paired down to, what does it, I was, I was wild.

- Okay, problem child, 'cause I got too wild. I got too wild, and now that it's how I'm getting paid. ♪ We're going out, come up and down ♪ - And it becomes this pop lyric that is universal, but also services to story and the characters

that we, that are into film. - Now, Chris, during an, a Reddit AMA, you said Golden had some surprising influence. In addition to K-pop, it was also inspired by juicy, by notorious BIG and forever, by Drake, M&M and others.

Talk about incorporating, the, I think, because people could see this as a children's movie. It absolutely is, but it isn't at the same time.

“- Yeah, I think we certainly never thought about it”

as a children's movie, and we sort of wanted to be as dense and smart as a movie that we would want to watch. But I think that, yeah, the musical influences were real joy to, to find, because part of the thing

which is this blend of like very tight and efficient storytelling

“within the song, but a song that was truly a pop song,”

not like, 'cause there have been some Broadway songs with pop stylings, but there's still essentially Broadway. And so like juicy, or there was a Drake collab called Forever, which is essentially, I started as a nobody, and I worked my way to the top and I'm still climbing.

And that's such a, in the case of all those songs, with biggie, it's like, it's very specific. He's like literally talking about Christmas mist us. Like, it really describes a person who is in a difficult place in life, and encapsulates their struggle.

And yet it's so universal that like, people all over the world connected to that. So we really took that as an archetype of like, this is K-pop, this is about these fantasy girl characters, but really it's the same archetype of like,

here are these three young women, and the pivotal emotional thing that that song helps you understand about that is, they don't really have anywhere else to go but each other. They don't have happy families and safe places.

And so their journey in this movie to figure out

“how to find themselves and be the best version of them.”

They only have each other, and that really helps you buy in at the same time that, as far as you can tell, you're just hearing like a fun pop song. So it was that mashup that was so fun. - Yeah, it absolutely doesn't sound like a Disney movie,

try it. - It's not, I've watched thousands of them. (upbeat music) - We'll be back in a minute. (upbeat music)

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That's K-A-R-A. That's JoinDeleteMe.com/kera. Code Kara. Let's put a little bit about the Korean influences in the film. I just got back from Korea as our 10 days.

And I have to say, it's not as big, I asked Koreans. I'm like, what do you think of that movie? They're like, and I was like, no, no, no. This is like the biggest thing across the entire world, which was interesting.

But there's enormous Korean influences here. Maggie, you came up with the idea for K-Pop Demon Hunters. It's also your directorial debut as we discussed. You said you when you were pitching the film, you wanted to make it as Korean as possible

in order to showcase the culture from ancient shamanism to modern K-Pop and a lot to pack into movie. Talk about translating your Korean heritage into an animated kids film. And where did you start?

A lot of people are under the impression it was from Korea. Just like, you know. And I'm like, no, no, no. It's not. It's Canadian-American, essentially.

Yes, yes.

“Well, I've always just wanted to work on a culturally Korean movie.”

Ever since I started in this business. And I was kind of waiting around for one.

And I never came across one.

And once I got into the position of being able to craft it and lead something like this, I decided, well, shoot, I'll do it. And so that's where I started. And landed on kind of demonology and the idea of demonenters and K-Pop was another Korean element that I could add in.

And it felt really exciting. And I had no idea where it was going to take me. And I was trying to figure it out, figure out kind of the concept of it. And then when Chris joined, he suggested rooting the mythology

into this mudang. And mudang is kind of, I don't know, they're kind of seen as like chipsies and output ciders. And so initially when we pitched the idea to a lot of Korean people,

they were a little like, well, that's a little strange. And so I was a little reluctant to go for it. But it just felt like the most perfect idea to root the mythology into something that existed in culture. So just decided to go for it.

And for me, that decision really opened up just a possibility of an opportunity to show the different areas of Korea, how music evolved through the ages, and through that the different fashions, and just getting very culturally specific

about the different areas and everything. And that's what really told me like, oh, this could be the most Korean thing ever. And so through every aspect, we try to infuse Korean culture. And it's like if you were making a sci-fi movie,

everything is kind of seen through a sci-fi lens. And we just did that with through a Korean lens. And so when they're having dinner, the dinner table would be filled with Korean food, the way it's the play setting is,

and or a building or any sort of location, even the costumes, the way they're makeup is done, we looked at a lot of Korean specific makeup tutorials. - Yeah. - 'Cause it's very different in specific.

- It is. - Well, you nailed it. - I was saying, especially at the concerts, right? I was in Korea. - Oh.

- It was a concert happening, and I was like, this looks like a pop demeanor. It was, I was walking through the crowd. And even the snacks, I thought you did an excellent job on this snacks, by the way, that they were having.

And now, Chris, I don't know if you know this, but you're a white American, you're a married to a Korean American author. But the only other film you directed is Wish Dragon, a set in China, you actually live there

a little bit during the development. You came on this project a little more than a year into development.

“Wouldn't you see your role was a telling this story?”

- Yeah, it's tied to two big ingredients that I fell in love with instantly. I was in the middle, I had Wish Dragon had done really well on Netflix. So Sony was like, let's make another movie together.

And I was really excited and had all my ideas.

and we had lunch, and like literally 10 minutes into lunch. I was playing very cool. - Too cool. - Work Maggie? - Yeah, too cool. I didn't think he was interested at all.

- Okay. - Yeah, and inside every other idea for a movie that I had been cooking up this flu out of my mind. And this was all I could think about. I think it's based in two things.

One, I'm a musician, my whole life. I've been writing music and songs probably longer than I've been writing screenplays. So the sort of proposal that I floated to Maggie was like, what could this movie among all the things

that it's about be about the power of music and the way that that transcends all our usual barriers and connects us in a way that just even words and logic can't. And Maggie's like a true like an OGK pop fan.

So she's been singing karaoke to this stuff for 35 years. So she has a lived experience of that.

“And I think we bonded really fast on that mission of like,”

let's find a way to dramatize and make music into a kind of superpower in its own way. - Right.

- And the second one was my wife, who's a Korean-American novelist.

And she's one of the first, her name's Mori and Gucci. She's one of the first Korean-American writers to kind of break out in young adult books. And she is a very funny, smart food-loving,

angry, vengeful, fashion-obsessed person. And when I was having lunch with Maggie, I was like, I want to make a film about these girls that are angry and funny and thirsty and food-loving and fashion-obsessed.

And I said, I know it's really weird coming from this, like the widest person you could imagine. But I know exactly what you mean. And I want to help you bring those characters to life because I married to one and she's so much more interesting

than the character's I see in animation. And so I think that those two things really bonded us in the movie so much, the result of those two things trying to reconcile and work together in balance. I think that's just--

He didn't-- he wasn't interested in how the next step go. But I think I was-- I was-- I tried to play cool, but then I immediately called everyone. It's like, please, please, please, please,

I want to do this movie.

“I think you played a cool-- for both of the hour,”

and then at the end, he was-- he was, you know, he showed excitement. So I was like, I don't know. He nailed his demon. Yeah.

All right, so every episode we get a question from an outside expert, you're going to have to indulge me. This one is a special one. I'm so immense. We're sure that-- and I'm four years old.

All right. It's the Mac pie and the blue tiger wheel. Oh, my gosh. Well, Maggie, for people on the movie, explain what he's referring to, because those were fantastic

characters to add, talk about their significance.

Well, we always wanted a tiger in the movie,

because the tiger is the national animal of Korea. And we didn't really want to just slap on an animal side. Could character, we wanted it to have a role. And we realized that we needed a way for Genu and Ruby to communicate with each other, said notes.

And it felt a little weird for Genu being 400 years old to just send a text message on a phone. So one of our production designers, Helen Chen, that this beautiful painting of Genu with this cat, like a statue that was turning into a real tiger.

And that automatically made him more attractive, because he's a man with the pet at the cat. And we're all cat people on this crew. And so we decided to make him like this mailboxes, this messenger with sending notes to each other.

“And so that's how Derby, the tiger is born.”

And the reason why we call him Derby is because we would, as a crew, just send these kind of illustrations of tigers to each other. And they were all kind of walleyeed and long-g eyed. And we send them to each other and say,

like, look at this Derby one, or this one's more Derby. And so that name just kind of stuck. And in traditional illustration, the tiger is meant to represent the wealthy, or the politicians. And so that's why they were a walleyeed and long-g eyed.

And the magpie is the commenter.

That's always pecking at his head.

And so we needed the magpie as well. And I think we just gave it three eyes, because it just made it more demon. But yes, more demon, that's what it was. Initially, my kids, and it's scary.

But then it's not. And it's adorable, which is interesting, because the tiger has very sharp teeth, and looks insane. And the magpie with the three eyes is fucked up in some way. But then it seems to work.

And it's interesting, because there are always sidekick animals

Just took it to another level. I thought that was really weird.

“And that's why I think he thinks it's real.”

And once one. So the animation sale also feels very unique. It's a mix of 3D CGI animation style used in big Western studios like Disney Pixar. But then there are these bursts, very clearly,

steeped in 2D, Eastern, and a May style. Chris, talk about blending these two distinct styles. And over the conversations you two had when it came to deciding how to mix them. Yeah, I think it goes back to like Bong Juno.

It goes back. There's actually a real shared DNA. I think between like the tonal range of his filmmaking from comedy and horror and deep emotion all right next to each other. K-dramas, Korean dramas, they're excellent at doing similar.

There's a famous early anime called "Caboy Beebop," which is a great, very much not-for-kids, kind of space noir series. And it has these bounty hunters that are really, really cool and violent, but also really goofy and weird and silly.

And those were, and then Sailor Moon, which is another early anime, which had these aspirational sort of superhero princesses that are also really silly. So in all of that was the shared DNA of like wanting

our characters to be able to go through some real genuine, deep, heavy stuff, and also be really goofy and expressive in ways that we felt like were unique to those influences. And so it really became really who the characters were and the tonal we wanted to achieve with them,

drove all the decisions from designing the characters to the animation style to even how we chose to light them. So it was almost like from the inside out that the visual style is a product of the range we wanted out of the characters that makes sense.

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Text caro to 511511 or go to ffrf.us/newyear. That's caro to 511511 and help protect the country that belongs to all of us. Text fees may apply. Let's talk about the business side of making the film Maggie.

One of the challenges you say you faced is when you were pitching the film, you didn't have any comparables to point two to get students on board. Talk about pitching the film and how you convince people

to stick with your vision at a time when the industry's facing as you noted a ton of pressure to do guaranteed hits.

I didn't interview Ted Sarandoz who runs in Netflix

a couple of years ago where he said, "There's a link to be big hits "are very little movies, nothing in the middle." He literally said, "You're all done." Yeah, so the movie was literally pitched

as a K-pop girl group who moonlight us demon hunters. That was the pitch.

“And then I think about six months into development.”

Christine Bellson, the president of Sony Pictures Animation, who is-- she just was very good taste and really leads Sony in a way where they want to encourage different type of films and different kind of--

it really pushed the envelope and tell the audience, especially with the North American audience, animation is not for children as a medium for any storytelling. And so she sat a stand and said, "Guys,

"I think this is a bigger movie." And that's when we started to look for a partner for me and we found Chris. And I think-- I don't know, it's hard. A lot of my director friends ask me,

how did you pull this off? How did you get away with so much in this film? And I think it's because Christine was just such a huge champion of this from the beginning. And it was not only Christine, but also Spring Aspers,

who's the president of Sony music. She's also a huge potential in this just from the music standpoint. And they were just supportive in making this thing not kitty, not for children, just making it a bit more adult.

We always called it like a hard PG-12.

And one of the things Christine also told us, too, is she said, "Let's objectify the crap out of these guys." Because we've never seen that before. And so we got-- We've got tasks, we have tasks from the top.

So we-- That's my son's favorite, "Demory." Oh, really? Yeah, it's guy. Yeah.

My young daughter, who's nine now, but she said, "He's weird." I was like, "That's funny." And Chris, even when his production started, the movie wasn't conceived as a big budget film,

but ultimately it cost about $100 million to make, even though you said the original plan was for a budget of about quarter of the size. So Chris, it when it gets to that number, obviously, that's where the shove comes in movies, I know.

From many friends of mine who are involved. Yeah, I think one advantage we had is that the initial green light pitch was quite-- it was really ambitious. We're like, this is a movie that's about musical superheroes,

and it has original pop songs, and they're all going to be legitimately great. And we kind of described the movie as it has evolved, which is nine out of 10 on the difficulty scale, 10 out of 10.

“But I think the promise of it was big enough”

that I think studios were like, well, if we're going to do this, we have to do it at a really high level and spend $100 million. And I think the other thing--

I don't know, I think we had this conviction, which I find, I guess, a little frustrating to me that there's not more conviction in the studio system, which is the fact that this is Korean, that it's an original idea that is filled with crazy ideas,

is a real asset. I like to say that this way, the rest of the world has been watching American Westerns for 100 years. And none of those people have ever been to Wyoming, and they don't know what a horse saddle gear is.

But they figure it out. It's like they travel and they connect to the core human story that's being told. So we pitched this spectacular movie, but we also pitched all the things about shame and identity.

And so having those two things in the oven, I think I think it made it, able to reach big audience and it also gave the studio a sense that this could be working on these two levels. But how do you get that?

Maggie, this is your directorial debut, Chris. You had one other film under your belt.

but that doesn't happening.

I talked to really well-known filmmakers that have had lots of successes. And what has to change to get these original movies made? And I will note that the two movies besides the K-pop Damon Hunters in the theatrical was weapons and sinners,

which are original movies, right? Not the retreads didn't do as well. So what is to change so others can get the original movies made each of you just briefly?

“I mean, I think the success is like we've had this year”

will help because it's like proof of concept that audiences want to stuff. And then I think it's one of the hardest things, especially in animation is to hold your courage because it goes long.

It takes, in this case, six, seven years. And there are many opportunities within that

to chicken out or to back down on the initial guts of the movie.

So I think you need, as Maggie said, you need to support like we had with Christine of somebody who, on the studio level, will go to bat for it and be like, I'm advocating for this thing, even though it's different and weird

and not something you've seen before, that is its strength. And I think if you have that, I don't know. It takes some courage, I think. And it's a personal, I think that's the best way to explain. It's like that conviction that Christine had was not driven

by books about screenwriting or data about who wanted what it was her own personal conviction that she was, I'm moved by this, it's funny, I love the music, I love the story and that you need people to act like humans in those roles and not just not data analysis.

But it certainly can go the other way. He did rivalry was rejected by everybody and idiotically because it was, sorry to say, a group of a certain kind of man who was like, why would I want gay? When, in fact, there was a huge fan base around that book series

which they wouldn't have known about. Maggie, what do you think about this? - It's scary, it's just scary to make these things. And I think I was scared so much. - It's so many times that made me just movie

and doing the comedy that we were doing, doing the drama that we were doing.

“But I think you just have to kind of push forward with that”

and it's, I don't know, I also think studios need to realize that I think, especially with animation because the budgets are so big, they tend to kind of want to appeal to everybody. And when you do that, you appeal to no one.

- Right. - And so something like he'd arrive or we, it's a very targeted, for me it was like Canadian, a gay love story, I'm in, like that was, it felt like it was made for me.

And, but then it was made for people who were not both of those things. - Right, exactly, who weren't fans and romantic. - No. - Yes, like how a success of our movie came to be.

The core K-pop audience really embraced it. They talked about it endlessly on social media. And when you get the core audience that you were appealing to, then it can go out for it, yeah. - I would argue, one of the big things was the story, right?

And you were both at backgrounds and story artists.

“And the experience, presumably, was helped, though.”

Can you explain what a story artist does and why that would be Maggie Gohan? - Oh, how much time do we have? - No. (laughing)

- So a story artist, as a story artist, you are kind of given assignments. It could be a moment in the movie, it could be an entire scene or a sequence. And it's your job to create images

that will kind of tell the story of the scene. And recreate what's called storyboards. And they're, you know, first sequence is anywhere between 100 to 500 if it's an action sequence. And you draw the movie the way you were kind of imagining it

in your head in drawings. And so you are the first person to kind of determine what shot would go for that line of dialogue, with that moment, the acting that the character does.

And a lot of times the story artist is always also writing

the scene. So you're coming up with moments, dialogue, jokes. And then we take those drawings and we edit them. We have a picture editor and we lay in temp soundtracks, temp voices, temp sound effects.

And we watch the entire movie in that form over and over again, doing iterations on that before it starts to move down to pipeline and become digital. - You said your background as a storyteller helped you control, keep control during the film's production.

Was it a time when you felt you were at risk for losing control of the movie and how did you reign it back in? - Oh, a lot of dark times. - It's just saying, there's a cut of the movie

where we were getting a lot of feedback. And we were addressing a lot of, you know, the notes and stuff that we were getting. And we screened it to a big live audience in Orange County. I think like 200 people.

And it was okay, it wasn't like it was an awful. They still liked it and I think our score was maybe like

And afterwards I asked Chris, like, did you like that movie? And he's like, no, and I was like, I didn't like it either. And we thought, from that moment we just decided, we're gonna make something, whether we sync or swim, we'll put something out that we love and we believe in.

And if people don't like it, at least we know. - Yeah, we did our part and it's what we wanted the movie to be. And so yeah, like that really told us that we just needed to rain things back to the way that we wanted and tell the story that we needed to tell.

- Right. So one of the things, though, Chris in a recent interview, you talked about how one of the challenges facing the animation world was how training opportunities have disappeared.

You both lean heavily on your decades of experience writing creating stories while making the film. - Talk about missing opportunities, what's lost and especially because the other big existential threat for animation is AI, right?

And a lot of it's slop, it's not always gonna be slop.

I keep telling that to Hollywood. They're like, oh, it's slop, I'm like, not forever. - For no. - My friends. Chris, talk about this.

How will the animation industry change over the next few years or making of movies more broadly, especially with AI and the idea that people aren't trained anymore? Same thing happens in journalism, by the way.

“- Interesting, yeah, I think it's a great parallel”

with journalism because what you see, and you would speak to this better than me, but there are centuries of institutional knowledge built up in terms of principles of how you operate as a journalism. With the goal of producing good journalism,

which contains the truth, hopefully, basically. And as you lose that, you have people partaking in journalism who don't have that education, they don't even know the mistakes they're making. They don't even realize the responsibilities

that they have in their craft. And I think in the animation, one of the struggles we've had is as it's gotten more decentralized and a lot of the big studios have become scattered around the world in terms of talent everywhere,

which is, there's a great upsides to that. But the experience of storyboarding a sequence and the tradition in the animations, you would storyboard a sequence and then you would pitch it live to a room of other story artists.

So you'd get up there. It's the closest thing to really performing the movie. You're doing voices. You're seeing if your jokes land, you're pacing, you're seeing to make sure

it's keeping people hooked and not dragging. It's like a mini edit of the film. - But you're also trying out jokes, so you're kind of standing up comic. - You're essentially, it's the wind tunnel.

You're building your little prototype and you put it in the wind tunnel and you see what kind of shit falls off and then you're like, yeah, revise, revise. And so that culture of artists doing that

has kind of gotten lost. It's a lot more remote now. And the artists, young stories are very talented, but a lot of them don't have that. What I would consider kind of a ruthless sense

of how I'm using the audience this time, how I'm using this one minute,

which will cost a million dollars to produce.

And so Maggie and I come from a background like we got a lot of training at DreamWorks. It really was like, better make sure whatever you're doing drama or comedy or something in between that you are.

You're making use of this time.

“And I think that we really bonded as writers about that.”

And it ties to the second half of your question, which is if your writing is purposeful, then you have a chance for your performance to be purposeful and you're seeing to be purposeful. And all of that gets formed

out to individual artists and they all have to contribute. And it takes decades of experience for each of those departments to deliver, let's say a character design a 3D model of rig,

which is the invisible bones that move the animation, so you can actually move your character. All of those are people who've spent 10 or 12 years mastering those skills. So you have this chain of artistic experience

and all of them are asking the same question, which is like, what is this moment about? Why are we doing this shot? Why are we doing this scene? So I think that--

That's difficult. Tools-- yeah, the tools of AI are going to evolve and they're going to replace in a certain way.

“But I think it's still always going to go back”

to that intention of the storyteller and the artist. - Though certainly, I think I do think Hollywood's lying to itself all the time. So I think studios are using it a lot more and I think screenwriters are using it a lot more

than they pretend they are. So Maggie, whether artist or artist like it or not, AI is here, Disney announced last year, it's a messing of billion dollars in open-air licensed characters to open AI's video platform, Sora, a lot of pressure to cut costs, obviously.

Do you think about it all? Because I think what's special about this movie, even though you use tons of technology,

animation has always been at the forefront of technology.

Movies have been at the forefront of special effects. Is it a negative or what's the boon that you see if any?

- I'm still on the film, I guess.

- You're eight. And most of that time was spent in writing and not producing the movie that we see now. So there's more work that isn't seen than it is seen. - Absolutely.

“- And I think for me, when it comes to AI,”

it's a tool and I think that artists and the AI creators are just not talking to each other. And I think that the more that we communicate, we can find ways where these tools can be developed to help us get to our results quicker.

And I can see places where that can be useful. But my relationship to my film is very complicated. There are times when I've hated it. There's times when it's a child. It's a child that you're raising.

And for me, you don't get that with AI. You're not like struggling with it and creating it and making it forcing it into something, having it push back. There isn't that tension in that relationship

that you're getting in the creative process. So it doesn't feel like there's, I don't know, there's that relationship. - With Chris was just talking about this wind tunnel. - Yes.

- It's not gonna reflect that ultimately in the product. So it's tricky. - Tech people often talk about lack of friction.

“They always think that's the best thing.”

And I always like, it ain't.

It actually is the worst thing for creativity or even humanity. - Yeah, I just wanna finish the docu series and I talk to someone about the effect on the human brain of chatbot.

- No. - No. - They're semesters. - Yes. - It's easy.

- Yeah. - Lack of friction is not a great thing. - Yes. - And that's what both of you were talking about. So last two questions, very quickly.

One is business. Movies now are not just about movies and sales and you've hit it out of the park on that. Merchandise. - I'm curious, why there's no merchant dice.

I found two key chains in the airport of the bird and the tiger. And then this, this I just found. - Oh yes. - Okay, this is a ramen spicy noodles with zoyonic

'cause my kids love zoy, it has Netflix on it. Talk a little bit about this part of the business 'cause like you see frozen, I have frozen mozzarella sticks. Frozen frozen, frozen mozzarella sticks. I, every time I see some frozen thing,

I have to buy them, I text Bob Iger and say fuck you. Like once again, but what happened here because that's a huge business for you which also helps you make what you want to make. - Yes.

- I think currently they are frantically loading the can and of merch to fire it soon. So there's lots, it's so much lead time involved with that and because the movie was a surprise. - But you didn't think you'd need the merch.

- Yeah, there was no plan to... - They didn't plan. - They didn't know what they were getting so there was no preparedness to capitalize on it. But it's also one of the things that we've been talking a lot about

is just different IPs are different in their fan base especially in that core audience and the sense of genuineness. And we feel like our core audience are older. They're really rooted in K-pop and they're rooted in anime.

- We've seen lots of merch by the way. - Yeah, and there's lots of merch there. They're also like, they are different the frozen audience with your six-year-olds. You can't create too much merch.

You can't oversaturate a six-year-old. Like my son, you know, he could wear F-1 underwear and drive to school in an F-1 car and watch F-1, it's not possible. There's no cynicism, there's no like selling out.

But with our audience, we feel like it does have to be more careful because, you know, K-pop demon hunters, frozen fish fillets, I'm not sure that that's where audience. - I'm hoping you don't do that. - We'll turn on it, so yeah, there's more cultivating it.

- It would be nice, like one out there. - They're there, we have to get to you on camera. - We'll get you on camera. - No, no, I'm teasing you, but it's really funny because this has now become a big part of entertainment

is the whole 360 and I was struck by how little there was no merch, right? There's tons of Barbie merch. - The same thing happened with Star Wars when they released that movie, there was no merch.

- No, they were selling and 50 boxes, right? - Yeah, now there's too much merch of that, you're right. So naturally speaking of six, you do have an enormous,

“you've all been to kids' parties recently, correct?”

You can only listen to Taylor Swift and Golden. And K-pop demon, just that is it. That's the entire experience of anyone with children between four and I would say adults, everybody. So naturally a sequel is already in the works,

but Sony Pictures Animation says it may not be ready

until 2030, which brings us to our second expert question.

This is from a six year old daughter class. - Okay. - It's the same K-pop demon hunter, gonna be in K-pop demon hunter too,

- Oh, she's very shy of her K-pop. She loves you so, just saying no, she's not gonna let you. - That's a good question. - Tell us about the sequel. Different hunters, new hunters, anything you could tell us.

- Oh, nothing. - We should be better at dodging this question by now. We're so bad. - We're so bad at it.

“- Honestly, we've been, it's been a crazy nine months.”

- Yeah, I can't imagine. - Campaning, et cetera, so it's, it's now we can see it on the horizon and our brains are starting to really dig into it, but I think the nice thing

is, the first movie was made honestly,

blessively devoid of the sort of sense that it needed to be for everybody. And so we made a movie that we love, that made sense to us that we felt would resonate with a certain fan base.

And I think we just have to follow the same personal approach, 'cause if you, and we'll just try to protect it from all of those outside expectations and categories of data and stuff, 'cause that, I don't think it helps all that much.

- Oh, you can't, you can't. And don't let them talk to you like that at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party afterwards. Maggie, they do that, people do that to me all the time whenever we made meat.

Let me tell you, we should do next year. I'm like, get the fuck away from me. Move along, you shall not tell me. Get the fuck away from me, doesn't a lot of work. Just so you know, Maggie, you get the last word on this.

You don't have to answer that question for her at all, but thinking about what's next. - Yeah, same, you know, I think this movie was very scary to put out, and we put all we got into it. And there's more, there's more we could take it further.

And I think we're gonna push it a lot further than we did with this one. And it's kind of giving me the courage to do that. - Yeah, you know, the reception to this. - Yeah, remember Godfather II was the better movie.

- Yes. - We won't speak of Godfather III. (both laughing)

But Godfather II was the classic, and you never know.

Anyway, what a great, an amazing thing you've done here. It's really beautiful. It's actually a really beautiful movie. And it's inspirational, it's funny.

“You have to when the Oscar, I will have some issues.”

And I promise I will scream about it on Minute 2. Anyway, thank you so much. - Thanks, Cara. - It's really fun. (upbeat music)

- Today's show was produced by Christian Castro Rosal, Michelle Aloy, Megan Bernie, and Katelyn Lynch. Nishot Kerwit is Vox Media's executive producer, a podcast, special thanks to Katherine Barnard. Our engineers are Fernando Ruda and Rick Juan,

and our theme music is by Tracodemics. If you're already subscribed to the show, you're slaying demons and you're golden. If not, you're my soda pop. Go wherever you listen to podcast, search for on with Kara Swisher

and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from podium media, New York Magazine, and the Vox Media podcast network and us will be back on Thursday with more.

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