Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans: The Making of KPop Demon Hunters

This interview was conducted in partnership with VIEW Conference. Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans were featured speakers at VIEW Conference 2025 in Turin, Italy.

KPop Demon Hunters has connected our world through music and animation in an unprecedented way. Its immense popularity, continuously breaking records on Netflix and music charts, is proof that when a perfect creative group of individuals come together at the right moment–magic can truly happen. The original concept, a group of Korean women with music superpowers whose voices can change your soul, was rather abstract, and as soon as Maggie Kang dove into storyboarding for the flight scene (where HUNTR/X perform for the first time with How It’s Done), she immediately realized the magnitude of fleshing out these new characters and everything around them. “There were so many questions that arose … How do I deal with this? What’s the mythology? Where do their powers come from? What happens with the demons when they get killed? All these things that you are forced to wrestle with when you’re trying to storyboard … I quickly realized how big of a concept this was,” she revealed.

It was paramount that the audience understood the hunters and their purpose from the very beginning, and in order to achieve this, Kang and Chris Appelhans had to envision the entire picture, and as every new crew member came in, the movie became more manageable even though it kept expanding: “For example, we would give an animator a very small scene, and they would take it and put as much story and character in it as they could … It just enriched the movie because this moment that we felt was small had the potential to be a bigger one. The movie kept getting more layers and just became deeper with everybody coming on,” Kang added.

The film is visually stunning, with the right blend of striking action, comedy, and emotional moments. What really makes it unforgettable is the incredibly iconic characterization–their silhouettes and uniqueness define each personality through detailed costume and makeup designs. Maggie Kang revealed that Rumi was made two years before her concept for KPop Demon Hunters even existed. She was created for another project by her husband Radford Sechrist: “He and I designed Rumi with the iconic silhouette with the long, flowy braid, and I liked the character so much that I plucked her out and made her the star of [KPop Demon Hunters]!” The other members of HUNTR/X came later on, but one thing that was important were their style. “Let’s make fashion actually good in animation. Let’s give female characters good makeup. Let’s make good nail art, all of that stuff that women love. And so that’s what we did. It was all part of character design, so a lot of our designers took it and just kind of ran with it. Of course, you see a bunch of different versions, but ultimately it has to serve the character. We wanted [them] to be feminine but also have a toughness and a warrior vibe. There were a lot of elements of Korean authenticity and traditional looks that we implemented into all of their costumes,” Kang said.

Ambitious story pitch: check. Gorgeous artwork: check. What’s missing? Ah, the songs! The secret-not-so-secret ingredient of KPop Demon Hunters is EJAE. “She is one of the pillars of the whole movie”, Appelhans confirmed, not only because she is the singing voice of Rumi but also because she was responsible for shaping the music for the film from the very beginning: “We asked her to write two demos–one for the plane fight, this aggressive, badass female pop song and the other a one-minute song inspired by Pansori (traditional Korean folk singing) but with a pop twist. Both of these assignments are stupid hard! She sent us the demos and we’re like, ‘There it is, it’s perfect.’” Those demos were crucial for greenlighting the project with Netflix, and EJAE continued her incredible contribution by co-writing Hunter’s Mantra, Your Idol, and the top chart hit Golden that she recently performed live alongside Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “She always understood the soul of the movie and the soul of the character, and I think that’s why people feel it so much,” Kang shared. The Honmoon is sealed!

On the other side of the story is the Saja Boys and their leader Jinu, the very unattainable heartthrob whose tragic past and choices leave him in a limbo between the dark and the light. “Jinu presents as the most commanding and in control but in the end he’s just an incredibly broken young man. What I like about his relationship with Rumi is that she brings out in him that vulnerability and gives him some sense that his character and his identity is more than just his mistakes … that’s why he makes the sacrifice. You just think he’s just utterly handsome, and you break him all the way down and then make a better version of him through that. I think that says something about toxic masculinity in a different way.” Chris Appelhans then revealed the reason why Jinu’s sacrifice was so important for the story: “We had several versions of the climax for a couple screenings where he didn’t make that ultimate sacrifice, and it always ended up feeling a little unsatisfying … he gets everything he wants, pays no price and just gets to walk off into the sunset? Pretty late in the process we felt like he really needed to take action, make a new choice that is not selfish. His character is defined by the choices he makes, and so as soon as we leaned into that, the whole climax got more interesting. Rumi’s belief that he could still be redeemed is a more meaningful climax to the relationship than a kiss in my opinion. Also, what’s better than an unattainable guy who dies and stays unattainable forever?”

Interviewing Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans at VIEW Conference 2025 was a dream come true, and their panel strongly enriched the incredible appreciation I have for this film through fascinating details about storytelling, characterization, and collaboration. KPop Demon Hunters is streaming only on Netflix!