KPop Demon Hunters Coming To Theaters Reveals The Real Reason For Its Massive Success

By this point, if you haven't already watched "KPop Demon Hunters," you've likely had multiple people in your life tell you that you have to, that it's amazing, and that it's their new favorite movie. The word-of-mouth campaign is one of the most powerful in recent memory, with the film staying at the number-one spot on Netflix's U.S. movies list for going on two months. Globally, it's only one spot lower.

The streamer throws so many movies and shows at the wall these days that it's unlikely anyone could have predicted the film's massive success. And with the recent news that "KPop Demon Hunters" is coming to select theaters for a brief sing-along engagement on August 23rd and 24th, the wave shows no signs of dying down any time soon. So what's the secret sauce? Why is this movie — a straight-to-streaming, original IP, animated musical film — so unbelievably dominant?

Of course, you have to give credit to the animation team, the voice cast, the songs themselves (whose independent popularity certainly plays a massive role), and the intersection with K-pop — a genre that's become massive worldwide over the past decade. But at the same time, I believe the film's true secret is something else — a method of fandom largely neglected by the rapid-fire pace of content in the streaming age: the rewatch.

People are rewatching this movie like crazy, and it's becoming a core piece of the entire "KPop Demon Hunters" fan community.

Multiple people told me to watch the movie before I finally listened to them (and then naturally thanked them in turn, because yeah, it's great). I had even heard some of the "KPop Demon Hunters" music before my first viewing. But I didn't take note of the rewatching phenomenon until two different friends, just days apart, mentioned to me just how many times they'd seen it.

Five times. Seven times. These were the numbers I was hearing just from people in my immediate circle. Now, I'm a serial rewatcher. I believe that a movie or a show is fundamentally something different the second time through because your brain and your heart engage with it completely differently. But I rarely hear people bring up repeated viewings as a key part of how they engage with new stories on streaming. There's just so much new all the time. Even the metrics of success on a platform like Netflix focus primarily on immediate impact, with little attention paid to projects that develop a long tail.

So, I did a little digging. You don't have to spend long on the "KPop Demon Hunters" subreddit to see that rewatch culture is deeply ingrained in the fandom as a whole. There are entire memes and threads dedicated to the idea, urging fellow aficionados to return again and again. People are claiming 20, 30, 96 rewatches. That unique aspect of the fandom is certainly a huge reason why the film is coming to theaters more than two months after its June 20th debut. Netflix did not see this coming, and pretty much everyone buying a ticket to the cinema shows will have already seen the film — probably multiple times. That's the whole point.

"KPop Demon Hunters" is already the biggest animated Netflix film ever. It's also clear that a big part of that success is because people keep returning to the movie over and over again, multiplying their time spent. There are even whole Reddit threads dedicated to tracking how it stacks up on the streamer's all-time movie list, keeping tabs on things like when Netflix will stop counting minutes watched. Director Maggie Kang has already said that she has ideas for a "KPop Demon Hunters" sequel, and with this degree of success, it would be ridiculous for Netflix not to capitalize.

The "why" of it all is harder to nail down. You could argue that this is a movie perfectly tailored to the TikTok and AO3 generation, filled with catchy choruses, fan-art-able characters, and heavy shipping. You could talk about the modern trend of the "comfort watch," magnified by a terrifying global reality, which makes this sort of cozy story about best friends, silly demon tigers, and neurodiversity naturally appealing. You could chalk it up to the worldwide phenomenon that is K-pop and idol culture. Or you could just write it off to the unknowable nature of The Hit.

Whatever formula you want to write, the results speak for themselves, and the rewatch has never been stronger. Seems like the perfect choice for a physical media release, eh, Netflix? But then, of course, all of these loyal fans wouldn't have to keep paying your ever-rising subscription fees, so maybe not.

Even the inherent evils of streaming can't keep me down with this one, though. Two months in, "KPop Demon Hunters" is still going up, up, up. It is, as they say, the moment.