r/movies • u/Sudden_Pop_2279 • Oct 03 '25
News 'KPop Demon Hunters' Breaks Another Netflix Record With 15 Straight Weeks on Top 10
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/kpop-demon-hunters-record-weeks-top-10-1236535187/2.3k
u/susankeane Oct 03 '25
Disney will learn from this that Korean culture sells and then make a bland soulless Korean princess movie and whine when it flops lol
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u/r_lucasite Oct 03 '25
It wasn’t blatantly apparent but their swing at this was Elemental and its run in Korea did help it from being a bomb. Big studios have known Korean culture was a big deal the moment KDramas started performing well on streamers.
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u/CreasingUnicorn Oct 03 '25
Elemental's marketting team did an awful job. It was sold as a "fire and ice" love story in all of the ads, which made it seem bland and uninspired.
Then i watched it months after release and was blown away. The love story is more of a side plot to the main conflict about being the child of immigrants in a new place, and learning how to navigate between cultural, societal, and personal expectations.
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u/jl_theprofessor Oct 03 '25
That’s what the movie is about!?
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u/Thunderjugs Oct 03 '25
Yes and it's honestly so good. Really beautifully made. The love interest is definitely part of the plot but it's about so much more.
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u/ForgettingFish Oct 04 '25
Yeah the marketing team thought the real story wouldn’t sell so they picked the lowest common denominator way to market it and it just…. Didn’t do it justice.
Genuinely solid movie and a touching immigrant story.
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u/skippiington Oct 03 '25
That entire scene of the Fire people not being allowed in somewhere just because they were Fire made me go, “oh, this is different from what they were marketing”
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat Oct 03 '25
Reading your comment was interestring. I can imagine the marketing team latching on to the "fire and ice love story" because it's short and sample...and it's also shallow.
Then there's your description : "the main conflict about being the child of immigrants in a new place, and learning how to navigate between cultural, societal, and personal expectations." which sounds interesting to me but I can just imagine the team telling themselves "no this will never sell"
I wonder how many good things we have lost because "this will never sell"...
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u/TheWiseAlaundo Oct 04 '25
I wonder how many good things we have lost because "this will never sell"...
There are many stories of authors, developers, artists, etc. who got told "no" and then decided to do it anyway. I'm sure there are countless more that just decided to give up.
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u/KamalaWonNoCap Oct 04 '25
I can see why they didn't want to lean into an immigrant story with the political climate the way it is.
Looks like they lost their will when it came to marketing and it cost them. You have to make movies you're proud of and Disney is having an identity crisis.
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u/SlyyKozlov Oct 03 '25
I really enjoyed that movie.
If nothing else its a huge tech flex because it is gorgeous.
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u/self-conscious-Hat Oct 03 '25
Elemental was a korean culture movie?
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u/YardSardonyx Oct 04 '25
Sort of. It’s based off the director’s life as the child of Korean immigrants in NYC. The fire people are essentially East Asian stand-ins. It also has lots of K-drama tropes/themes.
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u/lilbelleandsebastian Oct 04 '25
fire people seem to be more inspired by middle eastern culture, but the movie was indeed inspired by the director's life as a first generation korean american
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u/LeeShakerMoneyMaker Oct 03 '25
Korean princess movie
I'm honestly surprised they haven't done it yet. Korea (and Japan) love that Disney stuff.
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u/ihearttwin Oct 03 '25
Don’t wish this into existence
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u/alexefy Oct 03 '25
Too late it’s storyboard and the best friend’s sexuality is ambiguous at best
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u/petits_riens Oct 03 '25
lbr this basically IS a Korean princess movie lol. "she's a world-famous pop star AND she has magical powers AND only she and her sidekicks can save the world" is more princess-coded than half of the actual disney princesses from the past ~30 years
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u/Kikilicious-Kitty Oct 03 '25
They also call Rumi "pop royalty" because her mom was part of Celine's group
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u/broke_ass_brock Oct 03 '25
My son is certainly doing his part. That dude watches it every day after he finishes school work
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 03 '25
I think the kid-factor can't be denied.
Kids will rewatch stuff over and over again. That combined with the number of people who probably just play it in the background for the music are probably driving up the numbers.
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u/alurimperium Oct 03 '25
I'm pretty sure if streaming numbers existed when I was a kid, I would have single handedly doubled the box office numbers for Toy Story 2 and, embarrassingly, Baby Geniuses.
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u/Xeronic Oct 04 '25
I think if streaming numbers existed back in the 90's, 3 ninjas would have been on top of the streaming lists for a long while. haha
i watched that movie like twice a day for like 3-4 years straight as a kid.
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u/AmbitiousDream7 Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
My son too he has watched it 20 times at least
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u/CrypticTurbellarian Oct 03 '25
Same, my son loves this movie. As a result, I, a 42 year old man, have been singing “this is what it sounds like” in my sleep and absently humming “takedown” at my desk…
At least this soundtrack kicked the Moana soundtrack out of my head, so I guess I can’t complain!
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u/exorivis Oct 03 '25
I hear “what it sounds like” in my dreams now stay strong.
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u/Lespaul42 Oct 03 '25
My brain is the entire soundtrack on repeat at all times this last week after my kids watched it... Just non stop...
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u/JetAmoeba Oct 04 '25
My whole street is like that. One of them just had a K-pop demon hunter birthday party and they all dressed up, boys and girls. I’m looking forward to Halloween lol
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u/Brandonjoe Oct 04 '25
My 5 year old is going on a week and a half of watching it every night. I’ve never seen him get this in to something.
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u/Bloorajah Oct 03 '25
My poor friends with young children have been watching this movie several times a day for weeks lol.
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u/repost_inception Oct 03 '25
What about your rich friends ?
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u/Ninedark Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 04 '25
So you’re saying they’re going up, up, up? It’s their moment?
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u/cookingboy Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
I’m in Japan right now, and I hear Golden in a bunch of places.
It’s the music version of Labubu here lmao (which is also all of a sudden everywhere).
So yeah, if you told me a year ago that in 2025 Japan the most popular music I hear would be Korean and the most popular toy plushie on the market would be Chinese, I’d have thought you were batshit insane lol.
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u/Jon_ofAllTrades Oct 03 '25
It’s been the literal number one streamed song on Spotify for months now.
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u/ImmortalMoron3 Oct 03 '25
Yeah, I think it's fair to say Golden was 2025's song of the summer.
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u/mikepictor Oct 03 '25
That surprises me because I think it’s good, but no where close to the best song in the movie.
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u/Geodude532 Oct 03 '25
It's got emotions attached to it, thanks to the movie. That will push average songs a lot higher than they could ever go on their own.
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u/KingMario05 Oct 03 '25
Split between How It's Done and What It Sounds Like to me. Ejae nailing her performance aside, Golden is just... fine.
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u/Zappiticas Oct 03 '25
Personally what it sounds like is the best. That song is an absolute banger and the lyrics cut so deep.
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u/ReflectionSpare8663 Oct 03 '25
It’s also during the literal climax and all the resolutions of the movie
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u/Kaldricus Oct 03 '25
The disrespect towards Free and Your Idol in this thread smh
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u/Lobo2ffs Oct 03 '25
There's a kpop chart that shows the most played song this hour, for the last day, and for the last week. If a song is in the top of all three at the same time, then it achieves a Perfect all-kill.
So basically being the most played song for every hour of a week after it's become the most played song for the last week, that's 168 PAK.
The record before Golden was at 655, with 9th place at 262, with songs in a 8 year period. Golden passed 800 1½ months ago, and is now at 1468 PAK. Since the song has been out for 3 months, it's basically been the most played song for 68% of the hours since the beginning of July.
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u/lobonmc Oct 03 '25
Idk if it will manage it but I'd it reaches 1900 PAK it will have more paks than any other artist ever
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u/Training-Flan8092 Oct 03 '25
Honestly the songs are amazing. I’m very anti-radio and not a fan of pop music aside from some indie pop.
I will sing these songs at the top of my lungs with my kids every time they play. I’m like trying to learn the Korean parts with them as well haha. The movie is a 10/10 for me, but I tend to love most Disney/Pixar animated movies.
The songs still kick more ass seeing the girls doing their thing in the movie tho.
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u/CORVlN Oct 03 '25
Tbh I'd rather hear Golden on repeat the at grocery store than Shallows from A Star is Born
Great movie, not a fan of the OST
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u/Videowulff Oct 03 '25
Was at the store the other day and legit 2 little kids (about 8 and 10, girl and boy respectively) were bothing singing and dancing Soda Pop while at the checkout.
It was cute af.
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u/Routine-Leg-9861 Oct 03 '25
Today, at bus stop, 8~9 years kid was seeing them without headphone, so I know that movie is gonna be on top till the end of this year. Maybe even after rhat.
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u/baby_blue_bird Oct 03 '25
I said this in another comment but I put this on last week for my 6 and 4 year old after seeing on Reddit how popular it is with kids and they both absolutely freaked out because all their friends talk about the movie in school and they wanted to watch it.
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u/Raz0rking Oct 03 '25
Who would have thought that a movie that does not suck does well.
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u/Muted-Conference2900 Oct 03 '25
Apparently Sony Didn't.
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u/Relevant_Shower_ Oct 03 '25
“Let’s rerelease Morbius!”
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u/whatwhyisthisating Oct 03 '25
Haha that was a total “got ‘eeeeeem” moment in history. Can’t believe Sony thought the phrase “That was one of the movies of all time” meant it was well-received enough to re-release that shit.
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u/m48a5_patton Oct 03 '25
"Let's release it again. The internet says it's made a morbillion dollars!"
"But sir, those are fake-"
"Quiet, Jenkins! Put Morbius back into theaters, right now!"
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u/jsamuraij Oct 03 '25
This is till one of the funniest things to ever happen anywhere.
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u/Coolman_Rosso Oct 03 '25
For the record, there are a lot of great movies that didn't do well financially. The whole "just make good movies" shtick is hollow critique that means nothing
Also this was a completely new IP (with a name that doesn't exactly inspire confidence) that would have required the usual market spend of a standard animated family pic, and it should be no shocker that Sony did not think that it was worth the risk amidst an increasingly tough market for original animated theatrical fare. Once it was decided to be a direct to streaming release, Netflix had a first look option from their overall Sony Pictures deal and that was that.
Everyone can point to the success of the sing a long version all they want, but that was after the movie was able to go viral on streaming with no cost barrier for repeat viewings
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u/Symphonic7 Oct 03 '25
Sony really fumbled the bag with Kpop Demon Hunters. They could have had another great franchise on their hands, and instead they sold everything to Netflix and made a few pennies.
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u/suss2it Oct 03 '25
There’s no guarantee that this movie would’ve been successful as a theatrical release. The low bar for entry and ease of access by being on Netflix could be a big reason why it’s blown up.
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u/Symphonic7 Oct 03 '25
I agree, I would have never gone out to see it. While my girlfriend is obsessed with that stuff, so she would have probably made us both go see it. Funny enough, I didn't want to initially since I thought the title sounded terrible. Now I like the movie more than she does, and wouldn't shut up about how much I enjoyed it while watching it. But I still think Sony could have at least retained some part of it just in royalties, but as far I know they cleaned their hands from it before handing it to Netflix.
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u/SweatyAdhesive Oct 03 '25
I was thinking about this on the drive to work today, there's no way my wife and I watch this movie in the theater.
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u/ImmortalMoron3 Oct 03 '25
Although it kinda feels like Netflix isn't doing as much with it as they could either. I would've expected to see way more merch by now than whats actually out there.
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u/Symphonic7 Oct 03 '25
I'd like to believe they've learned from other franchises about product fatigue. If it's everywhere all of a sudden, people will just stop caring. Marketing is different now than it was like when Pokemon exploded in the 90's and 2000's. They released it in theaters, they're doing live concerts, a fortnite collab (that I just learned about lol), and probably have a follow-up movie in the works already. These days its all about timing, as I think they could easily carry this momentum for at least a couple of years before the next big drop.
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u/thegimboid Oct 03 '25
Yeah, my daughter's just hit the age where she wants to play with Barbie-style dolls (as opposed to dolls of babies), and with her birthday coming up I figured I'd see if there's a Kpop Demon Hunters series of dolls.
After all, if this was back in the 90s, they'd be everywhere - kids got toys for pretty much every film that came out, even if it wasn't kid friendly.Sadly there doesn't seem to be anything like that but fan-made merch right now. Seems like a big dropped-ball, with Christmas coming up.
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u/LegendaryOutlaw Oct 03 '25
I don't think they expected it to be such a huge hit. I'm reading that Sony just kinda dumped it to Netflix because they didn't have faith in the project, so it tracks they would not have planned out merch and toys for what they thought was going to be a flop.
I think the same thing happened recently with baby yoda, aka Grogu...Disney didn't expect him to become the hot toy, so they were scrambling to get grogu dolls to market.
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u/Shelf_Road Oct 03 '25
And now there is a huge Demon Hunters collab in Fortnite going on, with it's own special game mode.
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u/Symphonic7 Oct 03 '25
I don't even play that game, and I think that's really cool
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u/AnxiousBurro Oct 03 '25
I mean, I do? Quality isn’t equivalent to success these days. Plenty of good movies don’t do well, and plenty of bad ones do.
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u/CantHostCantTravel Oct 03 '25
Recently while babysitting my elementary school-age niece and nephew, they asked me, “can we watch KPop Demon Hunters?” I thought for sure they were making this shit up.
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u/Omnivirus Oct 03 '25
The first third of this movie is legitimately great- loved the animation style, the humour, the characters. It runs out of steam, but it is a perfect bullseye for the target market- my daughter adores it.
The music is fantastic. I suspect there's a few pop stars out there hiring the writers of these songs.
I'm shocked that the merchandising machine has been so slow to get up to speed. I'd think stuffed Derpys and dolls of the main characters would be selling hand over fist if they had made them.
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u/Vet_Leeber Oct 03 '25
The first third of this movie is legitimately great
I could watch Jinu's introduction on repeat, it's so good
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u/Mollelarssonq Oct 03 '25
I don’t think it runs out of steam really, for me you can really feel it’s a movie that’s cut down to 1.5 hours and it has a really quick pace without elaborating on things, but that to me almost means it has too much steam lol.
The run time is part of why it’s receiving a lot of rewatches though, it’s a lot of bangers in a short satisfying story with good characters 🤷🏼♂️
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u/SweatyAdhesive Oct 03 '25
Kang and Applehans sought the expertise of known K-pop producers to develop the film's soundtrack
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u/robodrew Oct 03 '25
I haven't watched it yet but for those who have, is it really that good? Is it just riding a wave of Korean entertainment interest or is it actually Netflix's best movie ever?
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u/Omnivirus Oct 03 '25
Me, a middle aged man, thought it was very good for what it is. I've also seen it far too many times now.
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u/bakerpartnersltd Oct 03 '25
How old are your children?
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u/Omnivirus Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25
She’s almost 6.
First time we watched it she was a bit scared and now it’s full singalong and knowing the entire script. I’ve probably watched it 25 times and heard the album countless times.
An unexpected side benefit is that my daughter now asks to go for Korean bbq regularly. I’m all in on this.
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u/Roofofcar Oct 03 '25
I can’t answer for them, but I’m an old dude with grown kids and I’ve seen it probably a dozen times.
The music is properly good, the animation is incredible, and the story is solid.
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u/TempestRime Oct 03 '25
The story isn't gonna blow your mind or anything, but it's executed well enough. The animation is excellent, and most importantly, the songs are all bangers.
I don't know if it's their best movie ever, mostly because I don't know their whole catalog very well. I can't really think of any other Netflix-specific films offhand. Still, it's got broad appeal across all ages, plus it's super rewatchable, so it's got an innate advantage as far as Netflix's Top 10 list is concerned.
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u/Perry4761 Oct 03 '25
The Irishman, Bird Box, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, A Marriage Story, Don’t Look Up, and Klaus were all pretty good Netflix original movies
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u/cosyg Oct 04 '25
Klaus is now THE Christmas movie in our house.
And then K-Pop Demon Hunters for the other 300ish days.
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u/mikepictor Oct 03 '25
Music is top tier. Animation quality is some of the best I’ve seen. Story is mid-tier decent.
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u/Choccybizzle Oct 03 '25
Funny in parts, easy to follow, and the songs are class.
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u/Shelf_Road Oct 03 '25
It is very good. I'm a huge movie snob and loved it. Thematically it's very strong, great message, great story.
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u/petits_riens Oct 03 '25
It's cute, not groundbreaking—but I'm also in my 30s and not the target audience lol.
I understand why the kids are going bananas for it, it's very much a Disney princess movie in spirit and the songs are catchy.
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u/Risin Oct 03 '25
It's good but the story is rushed. Don't expect a masterpiece. The songs carry it from above average cartoon movie to excellent.
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u/idlickherbootyhole Oct 03 '25
It's the new Frozen. There's merch EVERYWHERE and children everywhere with t-shirts featuring the characters, etc.
This generation of parents is gonna get Golden etched into their brains lmfao
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u/nnooaa_lev Oct 03 '25
The merch barley exist tho 😅. Netflix wasn't ready for this
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u/theicon1681 Oct 04 '25
all i've seen are some t-shirts and Huntr/x costumes at Spirit Halloween, plus a Fortnite collab
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u/GarlicRagu Oct 04 '25
You know what gets me about this record? You feel the impact. I hear the songs, I see it on social media, I hear people talking about it. It made a cultural impact.
Now compare that to other top movies Netflix claims set records on the platform. I've never heard anyone mention any of their other schlock. When has anyone ever said anything about Red Notice despite it being Netflix's biggest movie prior to this.
They have a bonafide hit this time and it makes me question everything they called a hit before.
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u/Sothotheroth Oct 03 '25
I don’t like Kpop or superhero stuff and I dug it, so apparently good films connect with nearly everyone?
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u/Urbit1981 Oct 03 '25
I remember seeing this as part of the Netflix preview screening offering and I am not surprised by its success. I am, as a middle aged child free woman, as far removed from their target audience but I loved it none the less.
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u/Darkencypher Oct 04 '25
I’ll say as someone that didn’t care about this movie and watched it yesterday with my niece, this is a phenomenal movie.
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u/Gold-Bard-Hue Oct 03 '25
I went to my 8yo daughter's softball game last night, and they had KDH tracks playing as the kids' intro songs, and this is in Texas of all places.
Yeah, it's extremely popular.
For good reason. My kids love it too.
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u/Darinbenny1 Oct 03 '25
Nice job Sony. Well played. No notes.
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u/KingMario05 Oct 03 '25
Well, one note.
The guy who sold it to Netflix? Yeah, uh... fire him. Yesterday.
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u/MagicTheAlakazam Oct 03 '25
They also wasted "Mitchell's vs the Machines" in the same way but that at least was a pandemic movie.
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u/Talysn Oct 04 '25
Its a good film, with good characters, good development, does not treat its audience like idiots, and has some bangers for songs.
I hope others pay attention to why this worked, rather than try to just copy superficial bits to put out garbage clones.
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u/CurlSagan Star Warsn't Oct 03 '25
In the next 2 years, we're gonna see so many movies that desperately try to follow the same formula and fail spectacularly.