KPop Demon Hunters

• 1. Introduction

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  By the 24th of December 2025, KPop Demon Hunters had passed 500 million views on Netflix, a total no other original title on the service had reached. It is an animated musical made by Sony Pictures Animation. Its heroes are Huntrix, a girl group who perform for adoring crowds and hunt demons when the lights go down. Then a rival boy band arrives, the Saja Boys, and it carries a secret of its own.

  The film began streaming on the 20th of June 2025. It is an American production with deep Korean roots, and that mix raises a series of questions. What is the barrier the singers protect, and what is the secret one of them hides? Why does a story drawn from Korean shamanism and folk painting look so different from other animated features? How did fictional bands outrun real ones on the music charts? And how did a film built for a streaming service end up filling movie theaters?

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• 2. The Honmoon

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  Gwi-Ma, ruler of the demons, once fed his appetite on the drained souls of humans. Long ago, three women began to fight back. They used their singing voices to raise a magical barrier called the Honmoon. New trios of hunters followed, each generation keeping the barrier standing. Their final goal was to harden it into the Golden Honmoon, a seal that would banish demons for good.

  In the present day, the trio is Huntrix, made up of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey. Rumi is secretly half-demon. Only she and Celine, a former hunter who raised her, know the truth. Strange patterns are spreading across Rumi's skin. She hopes that Huntrix's new single, "Golden", will turn the Honmoon gold and erase them. Then her voice begins to fail.

  Down in the demon world, Gwi-Ma rages at his servants' failures. Jinu, a human who became a demon, leads five demons in forming the Saja Boys. Their mission is to steal Huntrix's fans and weaken the Honmoon. In return, Gwi-Ma promises to wipe away Jinu's painful human memories. Huntrix spot the Saja Boys' true nature at their debut and attack them. During the fight, Jinu sees Rumi's patterns and helps keep them hidden from her bandmates.

  In a private meeting, Jinu tells Rumi that shame enslaves demons through voices sent by Gwi-Ma. He says that 400 years earlier, Gwi-Ma gave him fame and recognition that lifted his family out of poverty. Then Gwi-Ma condemned him to the demon world. Jinu now lives with guilt over what happened to his family.

  As the Saja Boys grow more popular, the Honmoon weakens and demon attacks multiply. With the Idol Awards approaching, Huntrix rush out a new song, "Takedown", to expose their rivals. Its harsh, demon-hating lyrics make Rumi uneasy, and her friendship with Mira and Zoey strains. Rumi offers Jinu a deal. If he helps Huntrix win the Idol Awards and strengthen the Honmoon, he can stay in the human world. She tells him that her shame had weakened her voice and that talking with him healed it. Jinu says he no longer hears the voices either, and he agrees to sabotage the Saja Boys. Gwi-Ma then summons him, reminds him that he abandoned his family for a life of wealth and comfort, and threatens to make the tormenting voices louder if he backs out.

  At the Idol Awards, Huntrix plan to perform "Golden" and to shelve "Takedown" because of the rift it caused. Impostor demons sent by Jinu lure Mira and Zoey away. Two other demons pose as the pair and trick Rumi into performing "Takedown", and during the song her patterns are exposed. She flees the stage and meets the real Mira and Zoey, who feel betrayed by her secrecy and her dealings with Jinu. Rumi confronts Jinu, and he admits he lied about his past.

  Gwi-Ma, strengthened by the souls he has taken and by the decaying Honmoon, walks into the human world. He casts a trance over the crowd, Mira and Zoey included, and draws them toward the Saja Boys' performance to feed on more souls. Rumi asks Celine to end her life. Celine refuses and starts talking about restoring the old order. Rumi lashes out that Celine never fully loved her, rejects the shattered Honmoon, and walks away.

  Rumi then interrupts the Saja Boys' show with an improvised song about her shame and about accepting herself. It breaks the trance over Mira and Zoey. Reunited, Huntrix fight back and free the crowd. Jinu, now repentant, sacrifices himself to shield Rumi from Gwi-Ma, and his restored soul reinforces her. The empowered trio defeat Gwi-Ma and the remaining Saja Boys. The demons are sealed away behind a new Honmoon, and this one is rainbow-colored instead of gold.

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• 3. Shame and Hybridity

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  Maggie Kang described Rumi's story in blunt terms: "Rumi's story is like she's coming out of the closet and coming clean to her parents who want her to be something that she's not." The filmmakers have said the arc parallels coming out, especially around parental and societal expectations. Kang added that the team "talked a lot about mixed heritage" while shaping Rumi, and about queer identity and addiction. The demon part of Rumi stands for anything a person hides from others.

  Stephen Thompson of NPR and Taylor Henderson of Out magazine both read the story as queer allegory. Henderson pointed out that the film has no explicitly LGBTQ+ characters, yet Rumi's struggle feels queer-coded. Celine taught her from an early age to hide her demon side, and the hiding hardened into deep shame.

  Sulman Aziz Mirza, writing in Psychiatric News, focused on shame, identity, and healing. He observed that hiding her patterns isolates Rumi and makes her skip bonding rituals such as bathhouse visits, until her voice goes silent. Mirza called shame a universal experience. In his reading, the patterns could stand for depression, queerness, trauma, neurodivergence, or being biracial.

  The academic Kim Seong-kon boiled the film down to three themes. Good and evil are not simple opposites. Differences are nothing to be ashamed of. Hybridity is a strength, not a weakness. Academics Putu Marvitta Adira Prastiwi and Nissa Puspitaning Adni stressed female empowerment instead. They argued that the solidarity among Huntrix's members builds a supportive community for women and pushes back against pressure on women to hide their imperfections. Arden Cho, who voices Rumi, put it simply: "Without Mira and Zoey, she wouldn't have made it."

  The character at the center of all this is older than the film. In 2016, Kang and her husband, Radford Sechrist, created Rumi for his comic Plastic Walrus.

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• 4. A Love Letter to Korea

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  In 2018, Maggie Kang pitched the seed of the film to producer Aron Warner, who was then busy with Wish Dragon at Sony Pictures Animation. Development began that same year. On the 8th of March 2021, Sony announced the project under the working title K-Pop: Demon Hunters. Kang and Chris Appelhans were set to direct, from a script by Hannah McMechan and Danya Jimenez. Warner and Michelle L. M. Wong would produce, with Mingjue Helen Chen as production designer and Ami Thompson as art director.

  Chris Appelhans had planned a long break after Wish Dragon. Kang's early ideas changed his mind. He said he had always wanted to make a film about what music can do: unite people, bring joy, and build community. The two writers were recruited by Nicole Perlman. McMechan told Variety that she and Jimenez "had never done animation before, and we didn't know anything about K-pop." Even so, she said, they were what Kang had been looking for.

  Kang wanted the film to look unlike other animated features, so she built it on Korean mythology and shamanism. She called it her "love letter to K-pop" and to her Korean background. Her team leaned on one historical detail in particular. Korean shaman women used song and dance as part of their rituals, and the film's demon hunters inherit that tradition.

  The tone drew on Bong Joon Ho. Kang said his films mix several moods in a way that suits animation, and she and Appelhans both cited his monster movie The Host (2006) as a model for blending genres. For the heroines, Kang rejected "Marvel female superheroes that were just sexy and cool and badass." She wanted that edge combined with "girls who had potbellies and burped and were crass and silly and fun."

  The name Huntrix blends the word hunter with the Latin feminine suffix -trix, a signal of women warriors. Its three members were modeled on K-pop girl groups including Itzy, Blackpink, Twice, and 2NE1. Their fashion and makeup took cues from Givenchy, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Alexander McQueen, with a goal of blending traditional Korean elements into haute couture. Mira was inspired by the Korean model Ahn So Yeon, who works under the name Ellis Ahn.

  The Saja Boys drew on boy bands such as Tomorrow X Together, BTS, Stray Kids, Ateez, BigBang, and Monsta X. Actor and singer Cha Eun-woo was a key influence on Jinu, the group's leader, and Kai of Exo served as a reference for his facial expressions. Apart from Jinu, the members' names reflect familiar K-pop archetypes. The word Saja also points to the jeoseung saja, a Korean folklore figure comparable to the Grim Reaper. It is also the Korean word for lion, which explains the lion head on the group's logo and the fandom name "the Pride".

  Baek Byung-yeul of The Korea Times saw the styling of both groups as linking past and present. Huntrix wear norigae pendants within modern K-pop fashion. The Saja Boys perform "Your Idol" in black hanbok and traditional horsehair hats, evoking the jeoseung saja. Huntrix also carry traditional Korean weapons. Max Kim of the Los Angeles Times spotted nods to early pioneers of Korean pop, such as the Jeogori Sisters, The Kim Sisters, and S.E.S.

  Kang described a visual journey for the Saja Boys. They begin in a "bubble gum pop, very saccharine, super sweet look" and shift darker until they fully take on the look of the jeoseung saja. Appelhans said the costumes Huntrix wear for "Golden" symbolize "their kind of MacGuffin of a dream", a pursuit of perfection. When Rumi's costume tears away at the end of the second act, that dream is disrupted.

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• 5. Anime in Three Dimensions

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  Josh Beveridge directed the animation at Sony Pictures Imageworks, working across its Vancouver and Montreal facilities. Kang said the team changed course after watching Sony's Spider-Verse films, which were celebrated for mixing 2D and 3D. Instead of blending the two, the filmmakers committed to 3D that borrowed the look and facial expressions of anime. Beveridge described the aim as "2D aesthetics but with three-dimensional language", with a "very bold graphic look". The film is made entirely in 3D computer graphics.

  The character art shifts with the mood. Moments of triumph look glamorous. Aggressive sequences turn angular and line-heavy. Comedy goes "chibi-esque". The first major scene to be animated was the first clash between Huntrix and the Saja Boys, which Beveridge said served as a proof of concept for the character designs.

  Kang pushed to show Korean identity through faces. Although the characters speak English, the animators shaped their mouths around the Korean language. For action, the filmmakers borrowed glitter effects from the South Korean film The Villainess (2017). Beveridge said it gave fights the feel of dancing: "You can get pretty violent if you put a lot of glitter on." Background details include Namsan Tower, Korean food, the Naksan Wall, sign swords, and traditional tiger motifs.

  The dancing itself came from working choreographers. Jo Na-In of Jam Republic created the sequences for "Golden" and "Takedown". Leejung Lee of The Black Label choreographed "How It's Done". Ha Seong-jin of the group K-Tigers handled "Your Idol", and Lee and Ha worked together on "Soda Pop". Jo said she focused on the storytelling the animation needed to carry, and she made the movements bigger and more expansive. She watched facial expressions and fingertips closely so they would read on screen.

  K-Tigers also shaped the fights, with Taemin serving as martial arts director. Ha wove taekwondo into the Saja Boys' choreography so it could show the art as something aesthetically powerful and not only a sport. Beveridge noted that some fight choreographers had done idol training. Between moves, they added cute little adjustments, and he said that is where the personality lives.

  The animals offer another thread. Salon's Hanh Nguyen wrote that Jinu's pet tiger and magpie, which the team calls Derpy and Sussie, draw on minhwa, a folk art that flourished in the Joseon period. Tigers, magpies, and pine trees are the focus of the Hojak-do genre, which took a satirical, anti-authority turn in the 17th century. Park Han-sol of The Korea Times called the magpie stealing the tiger's hat an affectionate nod to a long-running visual joke, a "playful jab at those in power".

  Story artist Radford Sechrist designed the tiger. He said its blue fur may have come from production designer Helen Mingjue Chen wanting it to feel more magical. Kang said Derpy began with no clear role, and the team did not want him to be a mere sidekick. A painting by Chen showed a tiger statue turning real beside an open-shirted Jinu, and that image made Derpy Jinu's pet. He became a way for Rumi and Jinu to pass messages, "and then the bird tagged along." Kang said the animals "live between these two worlds."

  The tradition behind them later got its own spotlight. Seoul's Leeum Museum of Art opened an exhibition on tiger and magpie minhwa that included a Hojak-do painting from 1592, considered the oldest surviving example of the style.

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• 6. Voices and Songs

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  Appelhans wanted the Saja Boys' songs to be "super catchy, but slightly hollow, like there's no real soul underneath." Huntrix's songs would carry honesty and vulnerability. In his words, "The surface-level part of your heart might be obsessed with the boys, but the deeper part is moved by the girls." To build that contrast, Kang and Appelhans sought out known K-pop producers.

  Agnes Lee, a Sony Pictures Animation producer, went looking for Teddy Park of The Black Label after the music of 2NE1 and Blackpink came to mind while she read the script. The original songs were written by Danny Chung, Ido, Vince, Kush, Ejae, Jenna Andrews, Stephen Kirk, Lindgren, Mark Sonnenblick, and Daniel Rojas. Producers included Teddy Park, 24, Ido, Dominsuk, Andrews, Kirk, Lindgren, and Ian Eisendrath. Marcelo Zarvos composed the score.

  Singing voices and speaking voices were cast at different times, with the singers chosen first. Ejae joined as a songwriter and was then offered the role of Rumi's singing voice. She told Genius Korea that the directors had grown used to her voice in the demos. Arden Cho first auditioned for Celine and then went for Rumi, at Kang's urging. The soundtrack also features Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami, Andrew Choi, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee, Neckwav, and Lea Salonga.

  Park Jin-young was first imagined as Gwi-Ma, back when the demon king was meant to be flamboyant and comic. Once the character turned menacing and traditionally villainous, the role went to Lee Byung-hun. Ji-young Yoo was announced as Zoey in April 2025, and the rest of the cast followed later that month. May Hong voices Mira, and the cast also includes Ahn Hyo-seop, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, and Ken Jeong. Liza Koshy plays a television host who interviews Huntrix.

  The soundtrack arrived on the same day as the film. Its lead single, "Takedown", is performed by Jeongyeon, Jihyo, and Chaeyoung of the South Korean group Twice. On the Billboard 200, the album entered at number eight, the highest debut of 2025 for a soundtrack at that point and the first of the year to reach the top ten. It was the highest-charting animated soundtrack on that chart since Metro Boomin's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse album, which peaked at number seven in 2023. It was also the first Netflix soundtrack to reach number one on the Top Soundtracks chart since Stranger Things season 4 in 2022. The RIAA certified it Platinum on the 8th of October 2025, for sales above 1 million units.

  On Spotify's US daily chart, the BBC noted, Huntrix with "Golden" and the Saja Boys with "Your Idol" both reached the top. They became the highest-charting female and male K-pop groups in the history of that chart, passing Blackpink and BTS respectively. Entertainment Weekly observed that these were not the first fictional K-pop acts to go viral, but their popularity matched that of real artists.

  "Golden" reached number one on the Billboard Global 200 and became the longest-running number one on the US Hot 100 by a fictional act. In South Korea, it became the third song of 2025 to achieve a perfect all-kill, a sweep of the top spot on every major chart. It also broke the all-time record for hourly perfect all-kills. The album became the first soundtrack in Hot 100 history to place four songs in the top ten at once: "Golden", "Your Idol", "Soda Pop", and "How It's Done". No film soundtrack had put even three songs in that top ten since Waiting to Exhale in 1995.

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• 7. Numbers and Verdicts

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  Netflix paid Sony $125 million for KPop Demon Hunters, according to Matthew Belloni of Puck. That sum covered the budget plus a premium worth 25% of it. In exchange, Netflix kept all film rights and owed no profit participation. The payment flowed from a 2021 agreement giving Netflix a first look at certain Sony projects. Belloni noted that most profit, including from any franchise, would therefore go to Netflix instead of Sony. Netflix film chief Dan Lin called it "a studio chairman's dream: a relatively cheap superhit", while Sony's Tom Rothman, Belloni wrote, "gotta be kicking himself over this one".

  The road to release was slow. A Netflix filing was first reported in April 2022, and Rothman confirmed the Netflix plan to Business Insider in February 2023. In June 2024, Netflix said the film would arrive in 2025, and in April 2025 it confirmed the date. In its first week, select cinemas in California and New York also screened the film. That limited run satisfied the United States eligibility rules for the Oscars in the animated feature and original song categories.

  Britain was a different story. The British Academy rejected Netflix's appeal for an exception, because the UK theatrical run began two months after streaming and lacked enough commercial screenings. According to Deadline, the film would have qualified for the BAFTAs had it opened simultaneously in British theaters and on streaming.

  On the 29th of July 2025, Netflix announced that the film was its most-watched original animated film ever. By the 26th of August it had 236 million views, passing Red Notice (2021) as the service's most-watched film. On the 3rd of September, with 266 million views, it overtook the first season of Squid Game to become Netflix's most-watched title overall. Nielsen, which tracks streaming on certain US television screens, reported 20.5 billion minutes of watch time in 2025, making it the year's most-streamed film.

  A sing-along version opened in theaters on the 23rd of August 2025 in North America, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It debuted in 1,700 theaters and displaced Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), which was then in 698 theaters. Projections had called for an opening of $18 to $20 million. In the United States and Canada, it made $19.2 million, ahead of Weapons, and became the first Netflix film to finish first at a weekend box office. It beat Glass Onion's $13.1 million to become the company's best-performing theatrical release. Netflix did not report grosses. The sing-along cut later arrived on Netflix as a separate version, and a second theatrical run followed from the 31st of October to the 2nd of November.

  Critics were warm. Brandon Yu of The New York Times called it "an original universe that is charming, funny and artfully punchy" and compared its cinematic approach to the Spider-Verse films. Kelechi Ehenulo of Empire described it as "a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Popstars: The Rivals". David Tizzard of The Korea Times called it both a love letter to K-pop and an unflinching critique of K-pop culture. Wilson Chapman of IndieWire admired how each song is staged differently: a demon fight for "How It's Done", an opulent music video for "Golden", a creation montage for "Takedown", and an energetic dance number for "Soda Pop".

  Some reviewers had reservations. Angela Garcia of SLUG wrote that the short runtime makes the film feel "like it's only scratched the surface of both the world and characters." Chapman felt the speed was both a benefit and the main flaw, since Mira and Zoey get too little story and the climax resolves too easily. Matt Goldberg of TheWrap noted occasional tonal whiplash. He also said the plot would be painfully overwrought without the comedy.

  The awards followed. The film won Best Animated Feature at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards, the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, and the 98th Academy Awards. It also won ten awards at the 53rd Annie Awards, including Best Feature, and Time named it its 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. "Golden" won Best Original Song at the Critics' Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Academy Awards. It took Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 68th Grammy Awards, plus Best OST at the 2025 Melon Music Awards and the 2025 MAMA Awards. It is the first K-pop song to win a Grammy or an Academy Award. At the 2026 Billboard Women in Music event, Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami were honored together as the singing voices of Huntrix, the first time a group was collectively awarded.

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• 8. The Korean Wave

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  Park Jihyon, a scholar of Korean culture, suggested that the film's popularity could become a major turning point for the Korean Wave. That term describes the global rise of South Korean culture and media, which has acted as soft power for the country. Cho Jae-hyon of Hankook Ilbo argued the film marks a new phase, in which Korean-themed work is made abroad and not exported from South Korea. He noted that the production team was largely non-Korean. Moon Dong-yeol of The Hankyoreh called this a denationalization of the Korean Wave.

  Both Cho and Min Seong-jae of The Korea Times pointed to Korean diaspora creators as the driving force. Cho wrote that Maggie Kang, a Korean Canadian, drew on childhood memories of Korean media. Grace Kao of Foreign Policy noted the many diaspora songwriters and artists involved, and compared them to the diaspora Koreans who helped build K-pop in the music industries of the United States, Canada, and Australia. She read the film as a rebuke to the localization trend in K-pop and said it "shows that consumers are not looking for a product stripped of Korean cultural elements or Koreans themselves."

  South Korea embraced the film. Michelle Yee Hee Lee of The Washington Post wrote that businesses and the government joined in, with products and events built around it. Hae-rin Lee of The Korea Times reported that fans began visiting studios, museum shops, cafes, and film locations such as Namsan, the Naksan Park Fortress Trail, and Bukchon Hanok Village. The National Museum of Korea in Seoul drew more than five million visitors, an unprecedented total that puts it alongside the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum, and the film was partly credited. The Seoul Metropolitan Government's data showed over 1.36 million international tourists in July 2025, up 23.1% from July 2024 and 18% from July 2019. The Korea Economic Daily called it the largest monthly tally ever recorded.

  The audience stretched far beyond Korea. Luminate told the All That Matters conference in Singapore that over two-thirds of the soundtrack's audio streams came from outside the United States, and it called the film a transmedia hit. On the 12th of September, Billboard reported that the soundtrack held seven of the top twenty songs on Australia's ARIA Singles Chart and had led it for seven consecutive weeks. "Golden" topped the UK charts for a sixth week, only the second K-pop song to do so.

  Fans in South Korea call their fandom "KeDeHun". Dance sequences spread on TikTok, and fan art flooded other platforms. May Hong said it was "crazy being on the receiving end of the film's fandom." A ramen challenge, based on the noodles Huntrix eat while singing "How It's Done", reportedly sent some fans to hospital with severe burns from boiling water. At Halloween 2025, the characters' costumes dominated Google searches, and retailers such as Spirit Halloween sold out. Netflix's official shop added a section for the film, and T-shirts and plushies ranked among its top five best-sellers of 2025.

  The film reached sports and television as well. On the 2nd of September, Novak Djokovic did a dance inspired by "Soda Pop" after beating Taylor Fritz at the US Open. Saturday Night Live featured the film in its season premiere, hosted by Bad Bunny, with Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami performing snippets and Bowen Yang playing Jinu. On the 7th of October, the three singers performed "Golden" in full on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. They repeated it at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the 27th of November, alongside a balloon of Jinu's pet tiger.

  Merchandise and spin-offs piled up. Rumi, Mira, and Zoey became purchasable outfits in Fortnite on the 2nd of October 2025, and a second wave on the 5th of February 2026 added Huntrix in their "Golden" outfits and a Jinu skin. Netflix granted toy licenses to Hasbro and Mattel, with toys due at retail in 2026. A digital artbook came out on the 28th of November 2025, and a physical edition followed in February 2026. A graphic novel adaptation was scheduled for March 2026. Cookie Run: Kingdom ran a collaboration from April to May 2026, adding Rumi, Mira, Zoey, the Saja Boys, and Derpy as limited-time Cookies.

  On the 29th of March 2023, Sony announced that its LENS mentorship program would produce a short film based on the world. In September 2025, the short, Debut: A KPop Demon Hunters Story, was rated PG by the MPA. A sequel is also in motion. Kang and Appelhans both said many stories remain, and Kang floated backstories for Mira and Zoey. Under the 2021 agreement, Sony holds the contractual right to make further installments, though they would likely stream on Netflix. TheWrap reported in July 2025 that Netflix was weighing two sequels, a television series, a short film, and a stage musical. On the 5th of November 2025, a sequel was announced for 2029, but in February 2026 Sony Pictures Animation president Kristine Belson suggested it would likely not be finished by then. In March 2026, Kang and Appelhans were announced as returning to write and direct. Kang said the next film would be bigger and more eventful, and Ejae said she would like to explore trot and heavy metal.

  For anyone who wants to own the original, the Criterion Collection is scheduled to release it on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra HD on the 31st of December 2026.

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