“KPop Demon Hunters” creator Maggie Kang recently told the BBC that she does not want to see her record-breaking Netflix animated movie getting the live-action treatment in the future.
“There’s so many elements of the tone and the comedy that are so suited for animation,” Kang told the news outlet. “It’s really hard to imagine these characters in a live-action world. It would feel too grounded. So totally it wouldn’t work for me.”
Since premiering in late June, “KPop Demon Hunters” has turned into a cultural phenomenon as Netflix’s most-watched movie in history. The film’s soundtrack topped the Billboard charts and made history as the first soundtrack album to have four songs in the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Lead single “Golden” has spent eight weeks and counting at No. 1. A sing-a-long version of the movie was released in theaters in late August and grossed $18 million in one weekend.
Kang created the story for “KPop Demon Hunters” and both co-wrote and co-directed the movie. The film centers on a hugely popular K-pop girl group named Huntr/x, the three members of which are also secret demon warriors. The women battle a rival boy band, the Saja Boys, who are secretly demons.
Chris Appelhans, Kang’s co-director, also told the BBC that “KPop Demon Hunters” should not be turned into a live-action movie.
“One of the great things about animation is that you make these composites of impossibly great attributes,” Appelhans said. “Rumi can be this goofy comedian and then singing and doing a spinning back-kick a second later and then free-falling through the sky.”
“The joy of animation is how far you can push and elevate what’s possible,” he added. “I remember they adapted a lot of different anime [into live action] and often times, it just feels a little stilted.”
Variety reported earlier this year that Netflix and Sony are in talks to make a sequel to the animated hit. Kang has been quite open in several interviews about her desire to continue the franchise in animated form. In an interview with Variety, she floated hopes for a sequel, particularly in going beyond Huntr/x’s lead vocalist Rumi to expand on the histories of her fellow group members Zoey and Mira.
“We’ve set up so much for potential backstory. Obviously, there’s a lot of questions that are left unanswered and areas that are not explored, and we had to do that because there’s only so much movie you could tell in 85 minutes,” Kang said. “This was Rumi’s story, and we have backstories for Zoey and Mira – ones that we actually put in the movie, but it just kind of rejected it. It just wasn’t the movie for those stories.”
“KPop Demon Hunters” is now streaming on Netflix.
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