If original IP is the golden ticket in the film industry, Maggie Kang has found it and taken it to unprecedented levels with the breakout success of her animated feature KPop Demon Hunters. Based on an original idea from Kang about a Korean girl band battling underworld invaders, it has not only become Netflix’s most watched film ever since its June 2025 release — it’s at 540 million views and counting — it also made history at the Oscars this year when Kang won the award for Best Animated Feature, making her the first woman of Korean decent to ever win in the category, and “Golden” became the first K-pop song to win in the Best Original Song category.

Kang is a director at Sony Pictures Animation, which developed and produced the project for Netflix, and the film’s stunning viewing figures prompted the streamer to release a sing-along version of the film in cinemas for a weekend in August, which earned Netflix its first No. 1 win at the box office with a $19 million tally. The streamer re-released the film on Halloween weekend, where it took $6 million, and since then the film has earned a Grammy win for “Golden”, struck a toy deal with Hasbro and Mattel, and currently has a sequel in the works, thus solidifying an unparallelled phenomenon for what was an entirely unknown IP a year ago.

“I could never have expected this kind of reaction,” says Kang, who co-directed the film with Chris Appelhans. “But I was confident that if I were to make a movie that I felt was great, then it would be received very well. When we finished making it, I loved it, because I hadn’t seen anything like this before and I’m so proud because I really pushed myself to my limits.”

KPop Demon Hunters follows Rumi, Mira and Zoey, A.K.A. kickass superstar girl band HUNTR/X, who protect the world from dark forces. The story was ultimately born out of Kang’s desire to see something different.

Kang says she wanted to see women who were “beautiful, badass and strong” but also “really funny and even stupid”.

“I felt there were things that I hadn’t seen yet, not just for representation and Korean culture, but also the type of female characters that I hadn’t seen in animation or movies in general,” she says. “I felt like I hadn’t seen female characters portrayed in the most real way for me, especially in the superhero category.”

“I felt there were things that I hadn’t seen yet, not just for representation and Korean culture, but also the type of female characters that I hadn’t seen in animation or movies in general.

Maggie Kang

“I don’t think stupid is a negative word. I think stupid is great, because it takes a lot of courage and confidence to be that way and to show that part of yourself. I wanted to see female relationships that really embraced that, and the intimacy that comes from that and the vulnerabilities that come with it. I just wanted to see the full spectrum of the female character.”

Born in Seoul, Kang grew up in Toronto, and she says she got into animation because of her love of stories. “As a child, I wasn’t someone who had a sketchbook and drew in it as a hobby,” she says. “I only ever really did drawings if there was a story or a character that really needed drawings.”

Teachers would often tell her parents that she was really gifted in storytelling, drawing and art, which ultimately led her to the prestigious Sheridan College in Ontario, where she studied classical animation.

After graduating she applied for a trainee role in the story department of DreamWorks. Two weeks later she was accepted and found herself on a plane to LA, where she has been ever since.

Kang says she’s spent the last two decades “learning the ropes” and admits that she didn’t even know what a story artist did when she first arrived in LA. “I just knew that it was a job that required me to draw and tell stories and that was what I wanted to do. I knew that I eventually wanted to direct something of my own and that was where I wanted to eventually end up, but I didn’t want to force it. I just wanted to be prepared for the job rather than just get there.”

While at DreamWorks, Kang worked across projects such as the Puss In Boots franchise and The Croods: A New Age, as well as Rise of the Guardians, Kung-Fu Panda 3, Trolls, Shrek Forever After, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Over the Hedge. She also contributed as a story artist to Illumination Entertainment’s Minions: The Rise of Gru and Warner Animation Group’s The LEGO Ninjago Movie, where she was head of story.

“I’m glad I took my time, because when I stepped into the role I was really confident in my skills and I was able to show the studios what kind of movie I wanted because there were not a lot of comps that I could provide for them, because this tone didn’t really exist, even in live action.”

Kang’s trajectory at Sony saw her grow from supervisor to director and then, in 2018, Sony put her pitch about a K-pop girl group set to save the world from a group of mythological demons into development. The original concept, she says, was “dark, adult and very violent.”

Then about six months into development, Sony Pictures Animation President Kristine Belson said she thought the idea was “bigger” and felt like it had “franchise potential” and suggested Kang make it into more of a four-quadrant film.

They began to look for a co-director to help Kang shape the idea. Initially, they hoped to find another Korean filmmaker, but after a year of searching, Kang finally found her partner in Appelhans, the filmmaker behind the U.S.-Chinese animated feature Wish Dragon for Sony. “He’s married to a Korean woman and so, culturally, even though he’s not Korean, I knew that he was very familiar with the culture,” says Kang. “What I really respected about Chris is that when he made Wish Dragon, which is culturally a Chinese movie, he knew he needed to go to China to make it, so he actually moved out there and worked there for two years with a full Chinese crew. So, I had immense respect for him because he knew the value of that.”

Culture specificity was incredibly important to Kang as she crafted this story. She admits that she didn’t have to do much research when it came to “the big ideas” and the demons and locations. She grew with a deep knowledge of Korean mythology and notes that her main research points were to make sure that the story was “authentic to what is culturally specific.”

“We wanted every little detail to be historically and culturally correct,” she says. “One of the biggest things is that I wanted to show Korea the way that I know it and the way it is. I didn’t want to make things up or have this be a fantasized version of Asian culture. I think it’s dangerous when we become OK with [reductive] Asian representation — I want more than that. I want specific Asian culture and specific Asian representation. I wanted every part of this movie to be Korean.”

They brought on Korean linguistics professor Mijeong Mimi Kim from Washington University to be a course-corrector for their story. For example, the first draft of the script featured emperors throughout the story. “But there were no emperors in Korea, they were all kings, so we had to change the language,” says Kang. “It was small details like that that we had to do for authenticity.”

KPop Demon Hunters did hit a specific cultural sweet spot, with audiences engaging more than ever with Korean pop culture, but it’s Kang’s authenticity that has propelled the idea to cult status.

“This movie is just so purely me, and I think Chris would say the same thing. Even though he’s one of the directors that made this, he was very supportive in making this movie my vision.”

Kang is currently working on the sequel, which she is adamant about keeping “fresh, surprising and original,” and she and Appelhans are across all of the creative for the IP.

“We want full control of that, because this is now a franchise and the creative is so important and everything that comes out of this franchise has to be high quality. The K-pop fans are very strict and they will notice.”

She continues: “What I would recommend to anybody in the creative field is to just lean into your own individuality. It doesn’t matter what gender you are. That’s all you can do — bring yourself to the table.”