Industry Training and the Future of AI

Kara, how do we get Scott to watch it? I don't know. Tell him everyone's hot. That'll work, right? Because everyone's hot. So watch it, Galloway . Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. We today are going up, up, up. It goes without saying that K-pop Demon Hunters is a major win for Hollywood in an otherwise disappointing year. But I don't think many people fully realize what a cultural and critical juggernaut the animated film is and continues to be. K Pop Demon Hunters is Netflix's most popular title ever, meaning movie or show with around a half a billion views. Four songs from the film cracked the top ten on Billboard's Hot One Hundred Chart at the same time, the first time that's ever happened for a movie soundtrack. The film's lead song, which I just referenced, Golden, spent eight weeks at the top of the charts. It was the first number one hit for any K pop girl group, real or animated. On top of that, the movie won awards at the Grammys, the Golden Globes, and the Critics Choice Awards. Now it's up for two Academy Awards at next month's Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. If they don't win both, I am going to storm the Oscars. My guests today are the film's two directors, Chris Applehans and Maggie Kang. For Maggie, K-pop Demon Hunters also happens to be her directorial debut of a movie she conceived. For a few people who still haven't seen the movie, Scott Galloway, the plot centers on a K-pop girl group called Huntry. x The trio are megastars, but that's just their day job. Their real job is to do battle with a shadowy underworld of demons looking to attack their fans in the form of a rival boy band, the Saja Boys. Oh, the Saja Boys. There's so many reasons K-pop demon hunters has become a massive hat, but it's very heart. It isn't just a story. It's a really great story of people overcoming odds. And that is a common thing through many stories. N allot of them do it as beautifully as they do with the music and the animation is gorgeous. I think the message that probably would you take away from their success is that originality and creativity still went out over everything else. And the endless amount of sequels, the endless amount of brain dead AI crap that they're going to throw at us does not take the place of a great story. And let me say my kids love this movie. It is supplanted in my home, frozen and Moana rather significantly. All right. Let's get to my interview with Maggie and Chris. I'm very excited about this as a parent and as someone who loved the movie as a person. We have some special expert questions today from my two kids, Clara and Solomon, who are huge fans of the movies. They are so excited I'm doing this. They're totally uninterested in my podcast career, but they're totally interested in this. So stick around. Get ready to have Golden stuck in your head for the rest of the day, and you'll be lucky for it. It's a wonderful s ong. Once upon a mundane morning, Barb's Day got busy without warning. A realtor in need of an open house sign. No, fifty of them. And designed before nine. My head hurts. Any mighty tools to help with this plight? Aha! Barb made her move. She opened Canva and got in the groove. Both creating canvas sheets, create 50 signs fit for suburban streets. Done in a quick, all complete. Sweet. Now imagine what your dreams can become when you put imagination to work at Canva.com. Once upon a dismal day, Bob's ice cream van looked gloomy and gray. Although he had big ambitions, his socials lacked creative vision. That bad. Maybe vampid epitaph? I have an idea. Bob launched Canva and got into gear. Create the video in the vampire team and make it the funniest I mean. It went viral. Bob's business? I revival. Now, imagine what your dreams can become when you put imagination to work at canva.com. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at about Amazon. ca. Chris Applehands and Maggie Kang, thanks for coming on on and congratulations on the film's two Oscar nominations. Thank you. Thank you. Um so I want to talk about a f a lot of stuff, especially the business, but it's been a wild few months uh for the two of you, and you're about to cap it all off by heading, as I said, to the Academy Awards next month. I know you've talked about this, but reflect on the film's monster success. There's no way anybody expected I've talked to people from Netflix. They certainly didn't. But first Maggie and then Chris. Yeah, I mean, you know, you can't really predict anything like this. But I I do think that we were very confident with what we had. We really loved the film when we finished it and and loved it all the way through from the very beginning. And really, you know, had high hopes that an audience would find it and if they did that they would love it just as much as we did and and luckily it did. And you know, I think we're still as a business trying to figure out how this new generation of of audience is absorbing content and um to have a movie like this land on a platform like Netflix where you're you're able to go global instantly. You're in like 98 countries, it's dubbed in like 40-something languages and the power of that is is kind of undeniable and there's nothing really like it and um and then this movie just kind of was carried by the fans they they found it immediately and it wasn't a large group of people that found it but when they found it they the the the passion for it was just so intense they were creating content uh you know for instagram and socials almost immediately. I I remember watching it on midnight and it was just it as I was watching there was content being created. So there's like this power of this generation that is content creators that is able to spread the word. Spread the word. It's not that. They actually are taking your content and then working with it. So go ahead. Um uh Chris next. No I mean those are the big epiphanies. I think the the fact that um I guess we really wanted to make something new. Um and I think again it's audiences telling business like we would like that. We would like new stuff. We we mashed up influences from manga and anime and K dramas and Kurosawa and it and really tried to make something that we wanted to see in animation that hadn't been seen before. And I think it's just become the recurring theme of all audiences that they they are hungry for that. They're so hungry for original things. Right. Original. Yeah. That dovetails with the power of word of mouth. Like I think it's really the marketing of word of mouth is as powerful as any formal campaign. And you'd see that on TikTok. That was really interesting. Like there'd be a fan-made homage video, you know, about one of the through lines in the story, and it would have a trillion likes and a bunch of great comments. And then there would be one even put out by Netflix, like a nicely done version. But just the fact that it was coming from sort of the the corporate account, the there was a different relationship to it. It was a more skepticism when it's made by a fan saying I this is why I love this movie and this is me putting my own time and energy into it. That has its own form of appeal in this age of marketing sagration that I think is kind of amazing. So direct to streaming was a good thing for you as opposed to a theatrical r release first, Maggie. You know, I I think so. Um when we got the green light, it was during COVID times, so it was everything was unsure anyway. And you know, the just the idea of theaters. So uh especially for me being a first time director, being able to create something and get something made that's original in this climate where originals are not really made., it It was was just, yeah, let's let's do this. Let's let's just make a movie. I was just grateful for that opportunity. Um and our movie was different because it came out, it struck success with an audience, and then we had a theatrical for a weekend. So I think we're trying to figure out like there's different ways that different films, you know, need, like just you know, wherever where they land. And maybe that's what we're learning as an industry, like how to get these things out there. Yeah, I do think people the reason it worked so well in the theater is later is because people watched it, loved it, and then wanted to experience it with people. Yes. Right. It was a totally different experience. It was like going to a a concert and experiencing the movie like how music is experienced in the film, which was I I I mean, I can't imagine going to a theater and and watching my film with an audience who hasn't seen it. Right, right. I feel like that would be terrifying. But this was a this was a great experience because you're like, oh wow, people love this and it's community and they just they're going there to enjoy it on a different level. And they want to meet each other. Yes. We had a similar experience with a pivot tour. They didn't could care less about us. They wanted to see each other and talk about us, which was great. But go ahead, Chris. I think what I realized that the theatrical showings was like there is a I think a desire, and I know I'm an agnostic person. I don't go to church. I never did. There's a real desire, I think, culturally for collective experiences, which concerts are and stories are. It's a kind of reason to gather and celebrate, especially with the story too. There's a often a value statement that you're sharing in and celebrating. And I feel like that it occurred to me being in the theater and enjoying the movie in this kind of, you know, almost euphoric state that that's something that I think we're really drawn to as humans. And and at least for me as a sort of non-church going person, I was like, I really love this feeling of being connected by a story and connected by music. And I think it's it's there's a shortage of it in our in our present day. And I I wonder if that's part of why movies mean as much as they do to us and we seek them out. Or they can, right? Or they can, yeah. Or they can. So for people that are on the broad plot, you have this K-pop girl group, Hunterx. Um it's three members at this point, Rumi, Zoe, and Mira. They're the latest demon hunting trio in a long line of them. But the spoiler alert, Rumi is part Demon herself and her friends don't know. Um, through that, you're exploring themes of self-acceptance and overcoming cultural pressures, uh, these are really heavy themes. So the movie doesn't feel heavy. Let's talk about striking that balance because, you know, as let me tell you, as a gay person, I heard gay. Like I think anyone who feels other has that feeling of fear of being found. I'd love each of you to talk about that. Maggie first. Yeah, you know, we talked about that kind of story a lot and um and so many different things. We talked a lot about addiction. We talked a lot about um yes, being like kind of the other, like um immigrant story. And we wanted to challenge ourselves with the storytelling, um, the way that Chris and I bonded as storytellers first is uh through our love of uh uh director Bong Jun-ho's films, especially the host in that film. I remember the first time watching it, um, I was blown away at how he was able to just juggle different tones. There's a scene where the family is grieving the loss of a child and they're crying. And then the next moment it just becomes this like physical comedy thing where one brother like jump kicks another one and they fall to the ground and they're like crying and just in this deep sorrow, but it's very comical and I had no idea that that could work, but it did. And and so and and director uh Park Chanuk does that as well in his films. And um and so we wanted to try that with this, um, and because especially because we were dealing with very dark themes, um, and one of the scenes that we really like, and we uh and it actually came later because we felt like, and this is the couch kauch kauch scene, very early in the movie. And you know, we were about to get into Rumi's backstory of being a part demon and this kind of burden that she has, this dark secret that she's keeping from her friends. And because we were going right into that, we wanted to kind of show the audience like what are what is Rumi fighting for? What are we what do we want for Rumi? And it's this kind of silliness, this being able to be silly with her girlfriends and just that intimacy. That's the thing that she really, really wants and what we want for her. And so we added the scene where Rumi's coming up from the couch with the silly face and offering up the costumes for the new single. And that was uh our way of kind of playing with tone, let's you know, let's keep it light, but also be dramatic on the other side. And I I'm a true believer of like I love comedy, but I also feel like the more comic you can go on one end, the more dramatic you can go on the other end. So we've always tried to strike that balance in this movie. Yeah. Chris? Yeah, I think that that speaks very much to my favorite quote about movies, which is Truffaut saying a great movie is truth and spectacle. And I feel like that was part of our strategy, really, is the word K-pop demon hunters, they like obviously invite the spectacle is so obvious and sort of fun. And you're doing that and you're just going a thousand miles an hour and you're entertaining and being funny and glamorous. And then hopefully planting seeds for the audience that are going to pay off later that that don't feel like homework and don't feel, you know, pedantic or anything. I grew up in a um in a small town in Idaho and I had several friends who to to keep it vague, they were in the closet and they were part of Mormon families. Um and they went through uh a very similar experience to Rumi in terms of, you know, basically realizing uh uh fundamentally they had to survive the experience of being told that the way you are is not worthy of love. That's such a incredible thing. And they uh it was odd because they had loving parents in a lot of ways. Um, but but that love was at at the very end of the day it was conditional. And so I watched them in their early twenties. They both went right up to the edge, just like Rumi does, of thinking the best thing would be not to exist anymore. And then um I think what I really admire about them is that they came to terms with the fact that they were never gonna get the love they deserved there and they went out and found it somewhere else. And that's that's what Rumi does. Yeah. That's often the case. And then everyone goes to the Book of Mormon and laughs at it. Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of Mormons go to that show, just so you know. So the song Golden is i is as much of a success as the film itself. It's up for best original song in the upcoming Academy Awards. Maggie, in an interview last fall, you said Golden was the last track you figured out and it was very hard to write. Uh uh you didn't know what the song needed to be to serve the story. So talk about what was the key to unlock it and how did you figure it out? Yeah. Um you know, through the writing process and and just developing the film, we got a lot of feedback from especially from the studio that, you know, we need to know more about the the characters in order to really be on the journey with them. And it's funny because we were like, oh well we know, but we realized, well, the audience doesn't know. And so we need to like give them a little bit of each of their origin story, where they come from. And because the movie is a non-origin story, and we were very adamant about telling a non-origin story, we had to kind of feed the audience a little bit of information here and there through flashbacks and such and because the first act is so tight we really couldn't find places to do that. We tried scenes where the girls meet on the on the island to train like as as youngsters. And it's just the movie just kept rejecting it. It's uh it just didn't want those scenes. And so um writing the golden song, I think it what really kind of uh unlocked it for us is it we also we were not convinced that we were making a musical um for the very long for a very long time, but finally realized through our executive music producer Ian Eisendrack, who comes from you know, working on Broadway shows and has a very great like just writing sense through music. And he's like, You guys need an I want song. Every Disney princess movie has one. And yeah, and we realized we do that we did. And and so Golden became that. Um, but then we realized that through the song we could also just sprinkle in a little bit of the backstory of the girls and so rather than show it. Rather than show it, yeah.. The scene Which you have. Did you make those? Yes, we did we did cuts with storyboards, but we never fully produced them. Um and and so we would make these with every song, we would make these like very long, very dry, just you know, literal uh documents for our songwriters. And we would write, you know, with Mira. She comes from a family, a lot of uh you know, like an educated background, but she's kind of this black sheep of the family. She's different from the rest of them. She's wild. She's she's spontaneous. She sh can be aggressive. And that that kind of paragraph is pared down to um, what is it? I was, I was wild. I was a problem child because I got too wild. Got too wild. And now that's how I'm getting paid . And it becomes this pop lyric that is universal but also services to story and the characters that we uh that are into film. Now Chris during an a Reddit AMA you said Golden had some surprising influence in addition to K-pop it was also inspired by Juicy by Notorious B I G and Forever by Drake Eminem and oth Yeah, I think um we certainly never thought about it as a children's movie. Um and we we sort of want it to be as dense and smart as a movie that we would want to watch. Um but I think the yeah, the musical influences were a real joy to to find because part of the thing that hadn't been done before is what Maggie described, which is this blend of like very tight and efficient storytelling within the song, but a song that was truly a pop song, not like because there have been some Broadway songs with pop stylings, but they're still essentially Broadway. And so like Juicy or there was a Drake collab uh called Forever, which is essentially a I started as a nobody and I worked my way to the top and I'm still climbing. And that's such a in the case of all those songs, like with Biggie, it's like it's very specific. He's like literally talking about Christmas missed us. Like it really describes a person who is in a difficult place in life and and it encapsulates their struggle. And yet it's so universal that like people all over the world connected to that. So we really took that as an archetype of like this is K-pop, this is about these fantasy girl characters, but really it's the same archetype of like here are these three young women. And the pivotal emotional thing that that song helps you understand about that is they don't really have anywhere else to go but each other. They don't have happy families and safe places. And so their journey in this movie to figure out how to find themselves and and be the best versions of them, they only have each other. And that really helps It absolutely doesn't sound like a Disney movie, trust me. It's not. I've watched thousands of them. We'll be back in a min ute. Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursda y. Let's talk a little bit about the Korean influences in the film. I I just got back from Korea. It was there ten days. And I have to say it's it's not as big. I asked Koreans, I'm like, what do you think of that movie? They're like, what m and I was like, no, no, no. This is like the biggest thing across the entire world, uh which was interesting. But there's enormous Korean influences here. Um yeah, Maggie, you came up with the idea for K-pop Demon Hunters. It's also your directorial debut, as we discussed. Uh you said you when you were pitching the film you wanted to quote, make it as Korean as possible in order to showcase the culture from ancient shamanism to modern K-pop and a lot to pack into movie. Uh we talk about translating your Korean heritage into an animated kids' film. Uh and where did you start? A lot of people are under the impression it was it's from Korea. Just you know? Oh. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's not. It's Canadian American, essentially. Yes, yes. Well, um I I've always just wanted to work on a culturally Korean movie. Um ever since I started in this business and I was kinda waiting around for one and and I never came across one and once I got into the the position of d being able to kind of craft it and lead something like this, I I decided, well, shoot, I'll do it. And so um that's where I started and landed on kind of demonology and the idea of demon hunters and K-pop was another Korean element that I could add in. And it it felt really exciting. And um I had no idea where it was gonna take me. Um and I was trying to figure it out, figure out kind of the concept of it and and then when Chris joined, he suggested you know uh rooting the mythology into this mudang and and and mudang is is is kind of I don't know they're kind of seen as like gypsies and out outsiders. And so I I initially when we pitched the idea to a lot of Korean people, they were a little like, oh that's a little strange. And um and so I was a little reluctant to go for it, but you know, it just felt like the most perfect idea to root it, root the mythology into something that existed in cr in culture. So just decided to go for it. And for me, that decision really opened up just the possibility of show being uh, you know, an opportunity to show the different eras of Korea, how music evolved through the ages, and through that the different fashions, and just getting very culturally specific about our diff the different eras and and everything. And and that's what really told me like, oh, this could be the most Korean thing ever. And so through every aspect, we try to infuse Korean culture. And it's like if you were making a sci-fi movie. Everything is kind of seen through a sci-fi lens. And we just did that with through a Korean lens. And so when they're having dinner, the dinner table would be filled with Korean food, the way it's the the place setting is um and or a building or or any sort of location, even the costumes, um, the way their makeup is done. We looked at a lot of Korean specific makeup tutorials. Yes. Because it's very different and specific. It is. Well you nailed it, I have to say, especially at the concerts, right? I was I was in Korea. There was a concert happening and I was like, this looks like K pop Demoners. It was I was walking through the crowd and the even the snacks. I thought you did an excellent job on the snacks, by the way, that they were having. Now, Chris, um, I don't know if you know this, but you're a white American. Um you're married to a Korean American author. Um but the only other film you directed is Wish Dragon, it's set in China. You actually lived there uh a little bit during the development. Um you came on this project a little more than a year and Yeah, uh it's tied to two big ingredients that I fell in love with instantly. Um I was in the middle of I had Wish Dragon had done really well on Netflix. And so Sony was like, let's make another movie together. And I was really excited and had all my ideas. And then um my producer introduced me to Maggie and we had lunch and like literally ten minutes into lunch. I was playing very cool. Too cool. Mark Maggie. Yeah. Yeah, too cool. I I didn't think he was interested at all. Oh, okay. Yeah. And inside every other idea for a movie that I had been cooking up just flew out of my mind. And this was all I could think about. And I think it's based on two things. Um one, I I'm a musician my whole life. I've been writing music and songs probably longer than I've been writing screenplays. So the sort of proposal that I floated to Maggie was like, what could this movie, among all the things that it's about, be about the power of music and the way that that transcends all our usual barriers and connects us in in a way that just w even words and logic can't. And Maggie's a like a true like an OGK pop fan. So she's been singing karaoke to this stuff for 35 years. So she has a lived experience of that. And I think we bonded really fast on that mission of like, let's find a way to dramatize and make music into a kind of superpower in its own way. Right. And the second one was my wife, who's a Korean American novelist, and she's one of the first her name is Maureen Goo. She's one of the first Korean American writers to kind of break out in young adult books. And she is um she's a very funny, smart, food-loving, angry, vengeful, fashion-obsessed person. And when I was having lunch with Maggie, Maggie was like, I want to make a film about these girls that are angry and funny and thirsty and food loving and fashion obsessed and and I said, I know it's really weird coming from this like the whitest person you could imagine. Um, but I know exactly what you mean. And I I wanna I wanna help you um bring those characters to life because I'm married to one and and she's so much more interesting than the characters I see in animation. And so I think that those two things really bonded us and the movies so much uh the result Wait, Maggie, if you thought he he he didn't wasn't interested, how'd the next step go? I was I tried to play cool, but then I immediately called everyone and was like, please, please, please, please, I want to do this movie. I think you played it cool uh for most of the hour and then at the end he he was he was you know he showed excitement. So he revealed his demon. place Alright, so every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Um you're gonna have to indulge me. This one is a special one. I'm Solomon Wisher Cat and I'm four years old. U h it's the magpie and the and the blue tiger real Maggie from Hubble and Z Movie, explain what he's referring to because those were fantastic characters to add. Talk about their significance. Well we always wanted a tiger in the movie because the tiger is the national animal of Korea. And um we didn't really want to just slap on a an animal sidekit character. We wanted it to have a role. Um, and we realized that we needed a way for Ginu and Rumi to communicate with each other, send notes, and it felt a little weird for Ginu being 400 years old to just send a text message on a on a phone. So um one of our production designers, Helen Chen, did this beautiful painting of Chinu with this cat, like a st a statue that was turning into a real real tiger. And that automatically made him more attractive because he's a man with the with a pet with a cat and we we're all cat people on this crew. And so we decided to make him like this mailbox, this this messenger with um sending notes to each other. And so that's how Derpy the tiger is born. And the reason why we call him Derpy is because we would as a crew just send of these kind of illustrations of of of tigers to each other and they were all kind of wall wall eyed and wonky eyed and we used to send them to each other and say, like, look at this derpy one or this one's more derpy and so that name just kinda st uck. And um and um in in traditional illustration, the the tiger is meant to be like the represent the the wealthy or the or the politicians, and so that's why they were wal eyed and wonky. And the magpie is the commoner that's always pecking at his head. And so um so we needed the magpie as well. And I think we just gave it three eyes because it just made it more demon like it was initially my my kids and it's scary, but then it's not. Then it's adorable. Which is interesting because the tiger has very sharp teeth and looks insane and the magpie with the three eyes is fucked up in some way. But then it seems to work. And it it's interesting because there are always sidekick animals in movies. This took it to another level, I thought. Oh, thank you. And that's why I think he thinks it's real. Um and wants one. The animation uh style also feels very unique. It's a mix of 3D CGI animation style used in big Western studios like Disney Pixar, but then there are these bursts of very clearly steeped in 2D Eastern anime style. Chris, talk about blending these two distinct styles and what were the conversations you two had when it came to deciding how to mix them. Yeah, I think it goes back to like Bangjuno. Um it goes back there's actually a real shared DNA I think between like the tonal range of his filmmaking from comedy and horror and deep emotion all right next to each other. K-dramas, green dramas are excellent at doing similar. Um there's a famous early anime called Cowboy Bebop, um, which is a great um very much not for kids kind of space noir series. And it has these bounty hunters that are really, really cool and violent, but also really goofy and weird and silly. And those were and then Sailor Moon, which is another early anime, which had these aspirational sort of superhero princesses that are also really silly. So in all of that was the shared DNA of like wanting our characters to be able to go through some real genuine, um, deep, heavy stuff and also be really goofy and and expressive in ways that we felt like were unique to those influences. And so it really became really who the characters were and the tone we wanted to achieve with them drove all the decisions from designing the characters to the animation style to even how we chose to light them. Um so it was almost like from the inside out the the visual style is a product of the the range we wanted out of the characters if that makes sense . We'll be back in a min ute Let's talk about the business side of making the film. Maggie, one of the challenges you say you faced is when you were pitching the film, you didn't have any comparables to point to to get studies on board. Um talk about pitching the film and how you convince people to stick with your vision at a time when the industry is facing, as you noted, a ton of pressure to do guaranteed hits. I did an interview with Ted Serandos who runs Netflix a couple of years ago where he said there's only to be big hits or very little movies Yeah. Um so the movie was literally pitched as a K-pop girl group who moonlight as demon hunters. That was that was the pitch. And then I think about six months into development, Christine Belson, the president of Sony Pictures Animation, who is she just has very good taste and um really leads Sony in a in a way where it it's they they want to encourage different f type of films and different kind of it really push the envelope and tell the audience, especially the North American audience, animation is not for children, it's a medium for any storytelling. And so she sat us down and said, guys, I think this is a bigger movie. And that's when we um were started to look for a partner for me and and we found Chris. And I I think I don't know, you know, it it's hard. I I a lot of my director friends um ask me, How did you pull this off? How did you get away with so much in this film? And I I think it's because Christine was just such a huge champion of this from the beginning. And it was not only Christine, but also Spring Aspers, who's the president of Sony Music. She saw such huge potential in this just from the music standpoint. And they were just supportive in making this thing not kiddie, not for children, just making it a bit more adult. We always called it like a hard PG-12. Right. And one of the things Christine also told us too is she said, you know, let's objectify the crap out of these guys. 'Cause we've never said we've never seen that before. And so you know, we we we got we we got tasked, yes, we got tasked from the top, so we we stuck them. That's my son's favorite uh demon. Oh really? Yeah my my young daughter who's who's nine now but she said he's weird uh I was like that's funny um and Chris even once production started the movie wasn't conceived as a big budget film, but ultimately it cost about a hundred million dollars to make, even though you said the original plan was for a budget of about a quarter of the size. So Chris, when it gets to that number, obviously that's where the where the shove comes in movies, I know, from friends many friends of mine who are involved. Yeah, I think um one advantage we had is that the initial green light pitch was quite it was really ambitious. We're like this is a movie that's about musical superheroes and it has original pop songs and they're all gonna be legitimately great. And like we kind of described the movie as it has evolved, which is nine out of ten on the difficulty scale, ten out of ten. But I think the promise of it was big enough that that I think studios were like, well, if we're going to do this, we have to do it at a really high level and spend a hundred million dollars. And I think the other thing, I don't know, I think we had this conviction, which I find I guess a little frustrating to me that there's not more conviction in the studio system, which is the fact that this is Korean, that it's an original idea, that is filled with crazy ideas, um is a real asset. It's the I like to say it this way, the rest of the world has been watching um, you know, American Westerns for 100 years. Um, and none of those people have ever been to Wyoming and they don't know what a horse saddle gear is. And but they they figure it out. It's like they travel and they connect to the core human story that's being told. So we pitched the spectacular movie, but we also pitched all the things about shame and identity. And so having those two things in the oven, I think, made it I think it made it able to reach a big audience and it also gave the studio a sense that this could be working on these two levels. But how do you get that? Maggie, this is your directorial debut, Chris. You had one other film under your belt. You talked about wanting to make something new, but that does hasn't happening. I I I talked to really well-known filmmakers that have had lots of successes. And what has to change to get these original movies made? And I will note that the two movies besides the K-pop Demon Hunters, um, in the theatrical was Weapons and Sinners, which are original movies, right? Not the retreads didn't as well. So what needs to change so others can get the original movies made. Each of you just briefly. I mean, I think the m successes like we've had this year will help because it's like proof of concept that audiences want this stuff. Um and then I think it's, you know, one of the hardest things especially in animation is to hold your courage because it goes long. It takes in this case six, seven years. And there are many opportunities within that to chicken out um or to back down on the initial guts of the movie. So I think you need, as Maggie said, you need the support of like we had with Christine of somebody who on the studio level will go to Batford and be like, I am advocating for this thing, even though it's different and weird and not something you've seen before, that is its strength. Um and I think if you if you have that, I don't know, it takes some courage. I think it's a personal I think that's the best way to explain it. It's like that conviction that Christine had was not driven by books about screenwriting or data about who wanted what. It was her own personal conviction that she was, I'm moved by this, it's funny, I love the music, I love the story. And that you need people to act like humans in those roles and not just data analysis. But it it certainly can go the other way. Look, he did Ryberley was rejected by everybody and idiotically because it was sorry to say a group of a certain kind of men who was like, Why would I want gay when in fact there was a huge fan base around that book series which they wouldn't have known about. Maggie, what do you think about this? It it's scary. It's it's it's just scary to make these things. And I think I was scared so much so many times making this this movie and and doing the comedy that we were doing, do doing the drama that we were doing. But I I think uh you just have to kind of push forward with that and and it's I don't know. I I I also think studios need to realize that I think especially with animation because the budgets are so big, they tend to kind of want to appeal to everybody. And when you do that, you appeal to no one. Right. And so something like Heat of Rivalry, it's a very targeted for me. It was like Canadian, a gay love story. I'm in. Like that was that it felt like it was made for me. And but then it was made for people who who were not both of those things. Right, exactly, who weren't fans of romantic no yes, like how uh the success of our movie came to be. The core K-pop audience really embraced it. They talked about it endlessly on social media. And when you get the core audience that you are appealing to, then it can go outward. Yeah. I would argue one of the big things was the story, right? And you're s you were both have backgrounds as story artists and the experience presumably was helpful. Um can you explain what a story artist does and why that would be? Maggie, go ahead. Oh how much time do we have? No, no. So a story artist, um as a story artist you are kind of given assignments. Um it it could be a moment in the movie, it could be an entire scene or sequence, and it's your job to uh create images that will kind of tell the story of the scene. And we create what's called storyboards. And they're you know, for a sequence, it's anywhere between 100 to 500, if it's an action sequence, and you draw the movie the way you were kind of imagining it in your head in drawings. And so you are the first person to kind of determine what shot would go for that line of dialogue or that moment, the acting that the the character um does. Um and and a lot of times the story artist is always also writing the scene. So you're coming up with um moments, dialogue, jokes, um, and then we take those drawings and we we edit them, we have a picture editor, and we uh lay in temp soundtracks, temp voices, temp sound effects, and we watch the entire movie in that form over and over again, doing iterations on that before it starts to move down to pipeline and be, you know, become digital. Was there a time when you felt you were at risk for losing control of the movie and how did you rein it back in? Ugh. A lot of a lot of dark times. There's a cut of the movie where we were getting a lot of feedback and and we were addressing a lot of, you know, the notes and stuff that we were getting and we screened it to a a big live audience in Orange County, I think like two hundred people. Mm-hmm. And it was, you know, it was okay. It was And I think our score was maybe like six out of ten or seven. And afterwards I asked Chris, like, do you did you like that movie? And he's like, no. And I was like, I didn't like it either. And we thought, you know, from that moment we just decided we're gonna make something, whether we sink or swim, we'll put it something out that we love and we believe in. And if people don't like it, at least we know. Yeah. You know, we we did our part and and it's what we wanted the movie to be. Um and so yeah, like that's that really told us that we just needed to reign things back to the way that we wanted and tell the story that we needed to tell. Right. So one of the things though, Chris, in a recent interview, you talked about how one of the challenges facing the animation world was how training opportunities have disappeared. You both lean heavily on your decades of experience writing and creating stories while making the film. Talk about the missing opportunities, what's lost, and especially because the other big existential threat for animation is AI, right? And a lot of it's slop. It's not always gonna be slop. I keep telling that to Hollywood. They're like, oh it's slop. I'm like, not forever. For now. My friends. Um Chris, talk about this. How will the animation industry change over the next few years or making of movies more broadly? Same thing that happens in journalism, by the way. Aaron Powell Interesting. Yeah, I think it it's a great parallel with journalism because uh what you see, and you would speak to this better than me, but there are centuries of institutional knowledge built up in terms of principles of how you operate as a journalism, with the goal of producing good journalism, which has it contains the truth, hopefully, basically. Um and as you lose that, you have people partaking in journalism who don't have that education. They don't even know the mistakes they're making. They don't even realize the responsibilities that they have in their craft. And I think in animation, one of the struggles we've had is as it's gotten more decentralized and a lot of the big studios have become scattered around the world in terms of talent everywhere, which is there's a great upside to that. But the experience of storyboarding a sequence and the tradition in animation is you would storyboard a sequence and then you would pitch it live to a room of other story artists. So you'd get up there. It's the closest thing to really performing the movie. You're doing voices. You're seeing if your jokes land, you're pacing your scene to make sure it's keeping people hooked and not dragging. It's like a mini edit of the film. But you're also trying out jokes. So you're kind of a stand-up comic. Yeah. You're essentially it's the wind tunnel. You're th you're building your little prototype and you put it in the wind tunnel and you see what kind of shit falls off, and then you're like, yeah, revise, revise. And so that culture of artists doing that has kind of gotten lost. It's a lot more remote now. And the artists, young story artists are very talented, but a lot of them don't have that. What I would consider kind of a ruthless um sense of how I'm using the audience's time, how I'm using this one minute, which will cost a million dollars to produce. And so Maggie and I come from a background like we got a lot of training at DreamWorks that really was like, better make sure whatever you're doing, drama or comedy or something in between, that you are making use of this time. And I think that we really bonded as writers about that. And it it ties to the second half of your question which is if your writing is purposeful then you have a chance for your performance to be purposeful and your seeing to be purposeful and all of that um gets formed out to individual artists and they all have to contribute. And and it takes decades of experience for each of those departments to deliver, let's say, a character design, a 3D model of rig, which is the invisible bones that move the animation, so you can actually move your character. All of those are people who've spent ten or twelve years mastering those skills. So you have this chain of of artistic experience and all of them are asking the same question, which is like what is this moment about? Why are we doing this shot? Why are we doing this scene? So I think that That's difficult. to evolve and and they're gonna replace in a certain way, but I I think it's still always gonna go back to that intention of the storyteller and the artist. Though certainly could you know I think I do think Hollywood's lying to itself all the time because I think studios are using it a lot more, and I think screenwriters are using it a lot more than they pretend they are. So Maggie, whether artists or actors like it or not, AI is here. Um Disney announced last year it's investing a billion dollars in OpenAI and licenses characters to open AI's video platform, Sora, a lot of pressure to cut costs, obviously. Um do you think about it all? Because I think what's special about this movie, even though you use tons of technology, animation has always been at the forefront of technology. Movies have been at the forefront of special effects. Um is it a net negative or what's the boon that you see, if any? So I I was a I've been on the film for seven years. Well, I'm still on the film, I guess. Year eight. Um and most of that time was spent in writing and not producing the movie that we see now. So there's more work that isn't seen than it is seen. Absolutely. And and I think for me when it comes to AI, it it it's a it's it's a tool. And I think that artists and um the AI creators are just not talking to each other. And I and I think that the more that we communicate, we can find ways where these tools can be developed to help us get to our results quicker. And I can see places where that can be useful. But my relationship to my film is very complicated. You're raising. And for me, there's you don't get that with AI. You're not like struggling with it and creating it and making it forcing it into something, having it push back. There isn't that tension and that relationship that you're getting in the creative process. So it it doesn't feel like there's I don't know. It's just that there's that relationship with Chris was just talking about this wind tunnel. Yes. It's not gonna reflect that ultimately in the product. So it's tricky. Tech people often talk about lack of friction. They always think that's the best thing. And I'm always like it ain't. It actually is the worst thing for creativity or even humanity. I just finished a docuseries and I talked to someone very about the effect on the human brain of of chatbots. They're frictionless, they're seamless, they're chicophantic. It's easy. Yes. Lack of friction is not a great thing. Yes. And you're that's what both of you were talking about. So last two questions very quickly. One is business. Movies now are not just about movies and sales, and you've hit it out of the park on that. Merchandise. I'm curious why there's no merchandise. I found two keychains in Korea in the airport of the bird and the tiger. And then this. This I just found. Oh yes. Okay, this is a ramen spicy noodles with Zoe on it because my kids love Zoe. Uh has Netflix on it. Um talk a little bit about this part of the business because like you see frozen, I have frozen mozzarella sticks. Frozen, frozen, frozen mozzarella. I I I every time I see some frozen things and I have to buy them, I text Bob Iger and say, fuck you. Like once again. But what happened here? Because that's a huge business for you, which also helps you make what you want to make. Yes. I think currently they are frantically loading the cannon of merch to fire it soon. So there's lots is so much lead time involved with that and because the movie was a suppression. But you didn't think you'd need the merch. Yeah, there was no planned. There was no planned. They didn't know what they were getting, so there was no preparedness to capitalize on it. But it's also one of the things that we've been talking a lot about is just different IPs are different in their fan base, especially in that core audience and the sense of genuineness. Um and we feel like our core audience are older. Um they're really rooted in K-pop and they're rooted in in anime. Yeah, and there's lots of merch there. They're also like they are different, a frozen audience which are six year olds. You can't create too much merch. You can't oversaturate a six-year-old. Like my son you know he could wear F one underwear and drive to school in an F one car and like watch F one it it's not possible. There's no cynicism. There's no like selling out. But with our audience, we feel like it does have to be more careful because, you know, um K-pop demon hunters frozen fish fillets, um, I'm not sure that that core audience I'm hoping you don't do that. Will turn on them. So yeah, there's more cultivating it. Like one like one application. No, no, I'm teasing you. But it's really funny because this has now become a big part of of entertainment is the whole three sixty. And I was struck by how little there was no merch, right? There's tons of Barbie merch. The same thing happened with Star Wars. When they released that movie, there was no merch. No merch. Yeah. Now there's too much March of that. You're right. So naturally speaking of six you do have an enormo you don't you've you've all been to kids' parties recently, correct? You can only listen to Taylor Swift and Golden and K-Poc D. Just that is it. That's the entire experience of anyone with children between four and I would say adults, everybody. So naturally a sequel is already in the works, but Sony Pictures Animation says it may not be ready till 2030, which brings us to our second expert question this is from my six year old daughter Claire is the same K pop demon hunters gonna be in Kop Demon Hunter too or is it gonna be different hunters? Ooh. She's very shower. She loves him so, just so you know, she has never met you. Tell us about the sequel. Different hunters, new hunters, anything you could tell us? Oh, nothing. We should be better at dodging this question by now. We're so bad. We're so bad at it. Honestly, we've been um it's been a crazy nine months of campaigning, etc. So it's um it's it's now we can see it on the horizon and our brains are starting to really dig into it. But I I think the nice thing is the first movie was made honestly blessedly devoid of the sort of sense that it needed to be for everybody. And so we made a movie that we loved that made sense to us that we felt would resonate um with a certain fan base. And I think we just have to follow the same personal approach. Because if you and we'll just try to protect it from the all of those outside expectations and and categories of data and stuff, because that I don't think it helps all that much. Oh you can't. You can''tt. And don let them talk to you like that at the Vanity Fair Oscar party afterwards. Um Maggie, you get they do that people do that to me all the time whenever I made me let me tell you what you should do next year. I'm like, get the fuck away from me. Move along. You shall not tell me. Um get the fuck away from me. Does a lot of work, just so you know. Um Maggie, you get the last word on on this. You don't have to answer that question for her at all. But thinking about what's next. Uh same. I you know, I think um this movie was very scary to put out and we put all we got into it and um but i there's more there's more we could take it further and i think we're gonna we're gonna push it push it a lot further than we did with this one. And it's kind of given me the courage to do that. This yeah, you know, the reception to this. Yeah. Remember, Godfather 2 was the better movie. Yes. We won't speak of Godfather 3. But Godfathered to waso the classic. And so you you never know. Anyway, what a great uh an amazing thing you've done here. It's really beautiful. It's actually a really beautiful movie and it's uh inspirational, it's funny. Um you have to win the Oscar or I will have some issues and I promise I will scream about it on pivot too. Anyway, thank you so much . Today's show was produced by Christian Castor Russell, Michelle Aloy, Megan Bernie, and Kaelin Lynch. Nishot Karwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Catherine Barner. Our engineers are Fernando Ruda and Rick Kwan and our theme music is by Tracademics. If you're already subscribed to the show, you're slaying demons and you're golden. If not, you're my soda pop. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.