The Story Behind Netflix’s Most Popular Film Ever

15:10Kara Swisher:And so I watched them.

15:12Maggie Kang:In their early 20s, 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 I think what I really admire about them is that they came to terms with the fact that they were never going to get the love they deserved there. And they went out and found it somewhere else. And that's what Rumi does.

15:34Kara Swisher:Yeah, that's often the case. And then everyone goes to the Book of Mormon and laughs at it.

15:39Maggie Kang:Yeah, exactly.

15:40Kara Swisher:There's a lot of Mormons go to that show, just so you know. So the song Golden 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. 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?

16:03Chris Appelhans:Yeah. You know, through the writing process 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 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 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.

16:42Chris Appelhans: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 island to train as youngsters. And the movie just kept rejecting it. It just didn't want those scenes. And so writing the Golden Song, I think what really kind of unlocked it for us is we also, we were not convinced that we were making a musical for a very long time. But finally realized through our executive music producer, Ian Isendrack, 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.

17:28Chris Appelhans:Every Disney princess movie has one. Yeah. And we realized that we did. And so Golden became that. 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.

17:45Kara Swisher:Rather than have a scene, which you have. Did you make those?

17:49Chris Appelhans:Yes, we did cuts with storyboards, but we never fully produced them. and so we would make these with every song we would make these like very long very dry just you know literal documents for our songwriters and we would write you know with Mira she comes from a family a lot of 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 spontaneous she can be aggressive and that But that kind of paragraph is pared down to, what is it? I was wild.

18:26Maggie Kang:I was a problem child because I got too wild.

18:28Chris Appelhans:Got too wild. And now that's how I'm getting paid.

18:34Chris Appelhans:And it becomes this pop lyric that is universal, but also services the story and the characters that are in the film.

18:42Kara Swisher:Now, Chris, during a Reddit AMA, you said Golden had some surprising influences. In addition to K-pop, it was also inspired by Juicy, by Notorious B.I.G., and Forever by Drake, Eminem, and others. Talk about incorporating. I think because people can see this as a children's movie. It absolutely is, but it isn't at the same time.

19:01Maggie Kang:Yeah, I think we certainly never thought about it as a children's movie. And we sort of want it to be as dense and smart as a movie that we would want to watch. But I think that, yeah, the musical influences were a real joy 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. 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 called Forever, which is essentially, I started as a nobody and I worked my way to the top and I'm still climbing.

19:53Maggie Kang:And that's such a, in the case of all those songs, like with Biggie, it's very specific. He's like literally talking about Christmas missed us. It really describes a person who is in a difficult place in life, and it encapsulates their struggle. And yet it's so universal that 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.

20:35Maggie Kang:They don't have happy families and safe places. And so their journey in this movie to figure out how to find themselves and be the best version of them, they only have each other. And that really helps you buy in at the same time that, as far as you can tell, you're just hearing like a fun pop song. So it was that mashup that was so fun.

20:55Kara Swisher: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 minute.

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25:22Kara Swisher:Let's talk a little bit about the Korean influences in the film. I just got back from Korea. I was there 10 days. And I have to say, it's not as big. I asked Koreans, I'm like, what do you think of that movie? They're like, what? And I was like, no, no, no. This is like the biggest thing across the entire world, which was interesting. But there's enormous Korean influences here. Maggie, you came up with the idea for K-pop Demon Hunters. It's also your directorial debut, as we discussed. 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.

25:56Kara Swisher:Talk about translating your Korean heritage into an animated kids film. And where did you start? A lot of people are under the impression it's from Korea. Just so you know. And I'm like, no, no, no. It's not. It's Canadian-American, essentially. Yes, yes.

26:15Chris Appelhans:Well, I've always just wanted to work on a culturally Korean movie ever since I started in this business. And I was kind of waiting around for one and I never came across one. And once I got into the position of being able to kind of craft it and lead something like this, I decided, well, shoot, I'll do it. And so 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 felt really exciting. And I had no idea where it was going to take me. And I was trying to figure it out, figure out kind of the concept of it.

26:54Chris Appelhans:And then when Chris joined, he suggested, you know, rooting the mythology into this mudang. And mudang is kind of, I don't know, they're kind of seen as like gypsies and outsiders. And so initially when we pitched the idea to a lot of Korean people, they were a little like, oh, that's a little strange. And so I was a little reluctant to go for it, but, you know, it just felt like the most perfect idea to root the mythology into something that existed in culture. So just decided to go for it. And for me, that decision really opened up just the possibility of being 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 the different eras and everything.

27:50Chris Appelhans: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 through a Korean lens. And so when they're having dinner, the dinner table would be filled with Korean food, the way the place setting is, or a building, or any sort of location. Even the costumes, the way their makeup is done, we looked at a lot of Korean-specific makeup tutorials.

28:27Kara Swisher:Yeah. Because it's very different and specific. It is. Well, you nailed it, I have to say, especially at the concerts, right? I was in Korea, there was a concert happening, and I was like, this looks like K-pop demon hunters. I was walking through the crowd. And even the snacks. I thought you did an excellent job on the snacks, by the way, that they were having. Now, Chris, I don't know if you know this, but you're a white American. You're married to a Korean American author. But the only other film you directed is Wish Dragon. It's set in China. You actually lived there a little bit during the development.

29:00Kara Swisher:You came on this project a little more than a year into development. What did you see your role was of telling this story?

29:08Maggie Kang:Yeah, it's tied to two big ingredients that I fell in love with instantly. I was in the middle. 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 my producer introduced me to Maggie and we had lunch and like literally 10 minutes into lunch. I was playing very cool.

29:31Chris Appelhans:Too cool. Did it work, Maggie? Yeah, too cool. I didn't think he was interested at all. Oh, okay. Yeah.

29:36Maggie Kang: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 in two things. One, 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 a way that just even words and logic can't. And Maggie's like a true, like an OG K-pop fan.

30:15Maggie Kang: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. And the second one was my wife, who's a Korean-American novelist. And she's one of the first, her name is Maureen Gu. She's one of the first Korean-American writers to kind of break out in young adult books. and she is 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.

31:01Maggie Kang:And I said, I know it's really weird coming from the whitest person you could imagine, but I know exactly what you mean. And I want to help you bring those characters to life because I'm married to one 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 in the movie so much. The result of those two things trying to reconcile and work together and balance.

31:29Kara Swisher:Wait, Maggie, if you thought he wasn't interested, how'd the next step go?

31:34Maggie Kang:I think I was, I tried to play cool, but then I immediately called everyone. I was like, please, please, please, please, I want to do this movie.

31:42Chris Appelhans:I think you played it cool for most of the hour. And then at the end, he showed excitement.

31:49Kara Swisher:He reveals his demon ways. All right. So every episode, we get a question from an outside expert. You're going to have to indulge me. This one is a special one. I'm Solomon Swishercats, and I'm four years old.

32:09Chris Appelhans:Is the magpie and the blue tiger real?

32:19Maggie Kang:Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

32:22Kara Swisher:Maggie from Puponzi Movie, explain what he's referring to, because those were fantastic characters to add. Talk about their significance.

32:29Chris Appelhans:Well, we always wanted a tiger in the movie because the tiger is the national animal of Korea. And we didn't really want to just slap on an animal sidekick character. We wanted it to have a role. And we realized that we needed a way for Jinwoo and Rumi to communicate with each other, send notes. And it felt a little weird for Jinu being 400 years old to just send a text message on a phone. So one of our production designers, Helen Chen, did this beautiful painting of Jinu with this cat, like a statue that was turning into a real tiger. And that automatically made him more attractive because he's a man with a pet, with a cat, and we're all cat people on this crew.

33:13Chris Appelhans:And so we decided to make him like this mailbox, this messenger with sending notes to each other. And so that's how Derpy the tiger was born. And the reason why we call him Derpy is because we would, as a crew, just send these kind of illustrations of tigers to each other. And they were all kind of 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 kind of stuck. And in traditional illustration, the tiger is meant to represent the wealthy or the politicians. And so that's why they were wall-eyed and wonky.

33:57Chris Appelhans:And the magpie is the commoner that's always pecking at its head. And so we needed the magpie as well. And I think we just gave it three eyes because it just made it more demon-like.

34:08Kara Swisher:Yes, more demon. That's what it was initially, 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'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 and wants one. The animation 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 that are very clearly steeped in 2D Eastern anime style.

34:46Kara Swisher: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?

34:51Maggie Kang:Yeah, I think it goes back to like Bong Joon-ho. It goes back. There's actually a real shared DNA, I think, between the tonal range of his filmmaking from comedy and horror and deep emotion all right next to each other. K-dramas, Korean dramas are excellent at doing similar. There's a famous early anime called Cowboy Bebop, which is a great, 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.

35:35Maggie Kang:So in all of that was the shared DNA of like wanting our characters to be able to go through some real genuine, deep, heavy stuff, and also be really goofy 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. So it was almost like from the inside out that the visual style is a product of the range we wanted out of the characters, if that makes sense.

36:13Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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40:14Kara Swisher: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 studios on board. 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 Sarandos, who runs Netflix, a couple years ago, where he said there's only going to be big hits or very little movies, nothing in the middle, right? He literally said, you're all done.

40:42Chris Appelhans:Yeah. So the movie was literally pitched as a K-pop girl group who moonlight as Demon Hunters. 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 really leads Sony in a way where it's, they want to encourage different type of films and different kind of, really push the envelope and tell the audience, especially the North American audience, animation is not for children. as a medium for any storytelling. And so she sat us down and said, guys, I think this is a bigger movie.

41:21Chris Appelhans:And that's when we started to look for a partner for me and we found Chris. And I think, I don't know, it's hard. A lot of my director friends ask me, how did you pull this off? How did you get away with so much in this film? And 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 kiddy, not for children, just making it a bit more adult. We always called it like a hard PG-12.

42:03Chris Appelhans:And one of the things Christine also told us too is she said, you know, let's objectify the crap out of these guys because we've never seen that before. And so, you know, we got tasked. We got tasked from the top. So we stuck to that. That's my son's favorite demon. Oh, really? The abs guy. My young daughter, who's nine now, but she said, he's weird. I was like, hmm.

42:29Kara Swisher:That's funny. And Chris, even once production started, the movie wasn't conceived as a big budget film, but ultimately it cost about$100 million 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 shove comes in movies, I know, from many friends of mine who are involved.

42:49Maggie Kang:Yeah, I think one advantage we had is that the initial Greenlight 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 going to be legitimately great. And we kind of described the movie as it has evolved, which is 9 out of 10 on the difficulty scale, 10 out of 10. But I think the promise of it was big enough 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$100 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, is a real asset.

43:46Maggie Kang:I like to say it this way, the rest of the world has been watching American Westerns for 100 years. And none of those people have ever been to Wyoming, and they don't know what a horse saddle gear is. But they figure it out. It's like they travel and they connect to the core human story that's being told. So we pitched this 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 big audience. And it also gave the studio a sense that this could be working on these two levels.

44:25Kara Swisher: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 hasn't happening. 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 K-pop Demon Hunters, in the theatrical was Weapons and Sinners, which are original movies, right? Not the retreads didn't do as well. So what needs to change so others can get the original movies made? Each of you just briefly.

44:57Maggie Kang:I mean, I think the successes like we've had this year will help because it's like proof of concept that audiences want this stuff. 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 or to back down on the initial guts of the movie so I think you need as Maggie said you need the support like we had with Christine of somebody who on the studio level will go to bat for it and be like I'm advocating for this thing even though it's different and weird and not something you've seen before, that is its strength.

45:39Maggie Kang:And I think if you have that, I don't know, it takes some courage. Which is rare. And 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.

46:07Kara Swisher:But it certainly can go the other way. Look, heated rivalry was rejected by everybody and idiotically because it was, sorry to say, a group of a certain kind of man 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?

46:23Chris Appelhans:It's scary. It's just scary to make these things. And I think I was scared so much, so many times making this movie. and doing the comedy that we were doing, doing the drama that we were doing. But I think you just have to kind of push forward with that. And it's, I don't know. 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. 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.

47:00Chris Appelhans:Like that was, it felt like it was made for me. And, but then it was made for people who were not both of those things.

47:08Kara Swisher:Right, exactly. Who weren't fans of romantic. No. Yes.

47:11Chris Appelhans:Like how 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.

47:26Kara Swisher:I would argue one of the big things was the story, right? and you both have backgrounds as story artists and the experience presumably was helpful. Can you explain what a story artist does and why that would be, Maggie, go ahead.

47:38Chris Appelhans:Oh, how much time do we have? No, no, no. So a story artist, as a story artist, you are kind of given assignments. It could be a moment in the movie. It could be an entire scene or a sequence. And it's your job to create images that will kind of tell the story of the scene. And we create what's called storyboards. And 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 character does.

48:24Chris Appelhans:And a lot of times the story artist is always also writing the scene. So you're coming up with moments, dialogue, jokes. And then we take those drawings and we edit them. We have a picture editor and we 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 the pipeline and become digital.

48:54Kara Swisher:You've said your background as a storyteller has helped you keep control during the film's production. 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?

49:07Chris Appelhans:A lot of dark times. It's interesting. There's a cut of the movie where we were getting a lot of feedback. And we were addressing a lot of the notes and stuff that we were getting. And we screened it to a big live audience in Orange County. I think like 200 people. And it was okay. It wasn't awful. They still liked it. And I think our score was maybe like six out of 10 or seven. And afterwards, I asked Chris, like, 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 going to make something, whether we sink or swim, we'll put something out that we love and we believe in.

49:51Chris Appelhans:And if people don't like it, at least we know. You know, we did our part and it's what we wanted the movie to be. And so, yeah, like that really told us that we just needed to rein things back to the way that we wanted and tell the story that we needed to tell.

50:08Kara Swisher: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, creating stories while making the film. Talk about 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 going to be slop. I keep telling that to Hollywood. They're like, oh, it's slop. I'm like, not forever, my friends. Chris, talk about this. How will the animation industry change over the next few years or making of movies more broadly, especially with AI and the idea that people aren't trained anymore?

50:48Kara Swisher:Same thing that happens in journalism, by the way.

50:50Maggie Kang:Interesting. Yeah, I think it's a great parallel with journalism because 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 contains the truth, hopefully, basically. 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 great upsides to that.

51:37Maggie Kang: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.

51:59Chris Appelhans:But you're also trying out jokes. So you're kind of a stand-up comic.

52:02Maggie Kang:You're essentially, it's the wind tunnel. 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 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.

52:47Maggie Kang:And I think that we really bonded as writers about that. And 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 scene to be purposeful. And all of that gets farmed out to individual artists and they all have to contribute. And it takes decades of experience for each of those departments to deliver, let's say, a character design, a 3D model, a 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 10 or 12 years mastering those skills.

53:27Maggie Kang:So you have this chain 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 the tools of AI are going to evolve, and they're going to replace in a certain way, but I think it's still always going to go back to that intention of the storyteller and the artist.

53:51Kara Swisher: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. Disney announced last year it's investing a billion dollars in open AI and licensed characters to open AI's video platform, Sora. A lot of pressure to cut costs, obviously. 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.

54:22Kara Swisher:Movies have been at the forefront of special effects. Is it a negative or what's the boon that you see, if any?

54:32Chris Appelhans:So I've been on the film for seven years. I'm still on the film, I guess. Year eight. 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 I think for me, when it comes to AI, it's a tool. And I think that artists and the AI creators are just not talking to each other. 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.

55:18Chris Appelhans:There are times when I've hated it. There's times when I, it's a child. It's a child that you're raising. And for me, 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 doesn't feel like there's, I don't know, that relationship isn't there.

55:46Kara Swisher:Which Chris was just talking about, this wind tunnel. Yes.

55:48Chris Appelhans:It's not going to reflect that ultimately in the product. So it's tricky.

55:52Kara Swisher: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 about the effect on the human brain of chatbots. They're frictionless. They're seamless. They're sycophantic. It's easy. Lack of friction is not a great thing. Yes. And 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.

56:27Kara Swisher:I'm curious why there's no merchandise. I found two key chains in Korea in the airport of the bird and the tiger. And then this. This I just found.

56:39Maggie Kang:Oh, yes.

56:41Kara Swisher:Okay, this is a ramen spicy noodles with Zoe on it because my kids love Zoe. It has Netflix on it. Talk a little bit about this part of the business because, like, you see frozen. I have frozen mozzarella sticks. Frozen, frozen, frozen mozzarella sticks. Like, every time I see some Frozen thing 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.

57:11Maggie Kang:I think currently they are frantically loading the canon of merch to fire it soon. So there's lots. There's so much lead time involved with that and because the movie was a surprise.

57:21Kara Swisher:But you didn't think you'd need the merch.

57:22Maggie Kang:Yeah, there was no plan. There was no plan. They didn't know what they were getting, so there was no preparedness to capitalize on it. Right. 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. And we feel like our core audience are older. They're really rooted in K-pop and they're rooted in anime.

57:49Kara Swisher:Of which there's lots of merch, by the way.

57:50Maggie Kang:Yeah, and there's lots of merch there. They're also like, they are different. The 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 F1 underwear and drive to school in an F1 car and like watch F1. 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, K-pop Demon Hunters, frozen fish fillets. I'm not sure that that core audience.

58:24Kara Swisher:I'm hoping you don't do that.

58:25Maggie Kang:Will turn on them. So, yeah, there's more cultivating.

58:28Kara Swisher:One T-shirt would be nice. Like one outfit would be great. What? We'll get you one, Kara. No, no, I'm teasing you. But it's really funny because this has now become a big part of entertainment is the whole 360. And I was struck by how little there was no merch, right? There's tons of Barbie merch.

58:45Chris Appelhans:The same thing happened with Star Wars. When they released that movie, there was no merch. No merch. They were selling empty boxes, right? Yeah, now there's too much merch of that.

58:53Kara Swisher:You're right. So naturally, speaking of 60, you do have an enormous... You've all been to kids' parties recently, correct? You can only listen to Taylor Swift and Golden and K-pop. 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 until 2030, which brings us to our second expert question. This is from my six-year-old daughter, Claire.

59:25Maggie Kang:Is the same K-pop Demon Hunters going to be in K-pop Demon Hunter 2,

59:35Kara Swisher:or is it going to be different hunters? Ooh. She's very shy. She loves you so, just so you know. She's never met you. That's a good question. Tell us about the sequel. Different hunters, new hunters, anything you could tell us? Oh, nothing.

59:54Maggie Kang:We should be better at dodging this question by now. We're so bad.

59:57Chris Appelhans:We're so bad at it.

1:00:00Maggie Kang:Honestly, we've been, it's been a crazy nine months.

1:00:04Kara Swisher:of campaigning, etc.

1:00:06Maggie Kang:So it's now we can see it on the horizon and our brains are starting to really dig into it. But 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 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 all of those outside expectations and categories of data and stuff because I don't think it helps all that much. Oh, you can't.

1:00:48Kara Swisher:You can't. And don't let them talk to you like that at the Vanity Fair Oscar party afterwards. Maggie, you get the, they do that. People do that to me all the time whenever I made meet. 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. Get the Fuck Away From Me does a lot of work, just so you know. Maggie, you get the last word on this. You don't have to answer that question for her at all. But thinking about what's next.

1:01:11Chris Appelhans:Yeah, same. You know, I think this movie was very scary to put out. And we put all we got into it. But there's more. There's more. We could take it further. And I think we're going to push it a lot further than we did with this one. And it's kind of given me the courage to do that. Yeah. you know, the reception to this.

1:01:33Kara Swisher:Yeah. Remember, Godfather 2 was the better movie. Yes. We won't speak of Godfather 3. But Godfather 2 was the classic. And so you never know. Anyway, what a great and amazing thing you've done here. It's really beautiful. It's actually a really beautiful movie. And it's inspirational. It's funny. You have to win the Oscar. I will have some issues. And I promise I will scream about it on Pivot 2. Anyway, thank you so much. Thanks, Kara. It's really fun. Thank you, Kara.

1:02:05Kara Swisher:Today's show is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Michelle Alloy, Megan Burney, and Kaelin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa 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 Trackademics. 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.

1:02:38Kara Swisher:We'll be back on Thursday with more.