How ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Changed the Game For Netflix

In November, the Recording Academy made history by recognizing a K-pop girl group with a nomination for the first time. It just so happened that particular girl group was fictional.

HUNTR/X — the trio of animated K-pop idols Rumi, Mira and Zoey, voiced by human artists EJAE, Audrey Nuna and REI AMI, respectively — notched Grammy nods for song of the year and best pop duo/group performance, among other nominations in film-focused categories. As Nuna told Billboard at the time of the group’s nods: “I think we’re just very, very, very grateful to be a part of what feels like a very cultural and historic moment.”

That moment extends beyond the Grammys. Since its release on Netflix in June, KPop Demon Hunters has become the rare streaming movie to attain cultural ubiquity. After the film earned critical acclaim and became the platform’s most popular original movie of all time, Netflix broke with its own streaming strategy and gave the project a limited singalong release in theaters; it proceeded to earn the No. 1 spot at the box office in its opening weekend. Less than two weeks later, KPop Demon Hunters surpassed Squid Game to become the most streamed title in Netflix’s history.

But the project accomplished even greater feats with its music. After slowly climbing the charts following the film’s release, the soundtrack spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in September and October. Its rise was boosted by the runaway success of “Golden,” which became a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit in August and ruled the ranking for eight weeks. On the Billboard Global 200, it has topped the chart for 18 weeks. Plus, the soundtrack became the first to have four songs simultaneously appear in the Hot 100’s top 10, with “How It’s Done,” “Your Idol” and “Soda Pop” (the latter two of which were sung by the film’s fictional boy band, Saja Boys) joining “Golden.” Even outside the charts, the singers behind HUNTR/X appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch alongside global superstar Bad Bunny and performed during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

KPop Demon Hunters serves as just the latest and most potent example of the dominating success music written for film can have amid the larger music landscape in 2025. Whether it’s familiar show tunes adapted from a beloved musical (Wicked: For Good), a mix of blues and folk covers with some rootsy originals (Sinners) or a blockbuster compilation of pop A-listers (F1: The Movie), music in film has had a compounding impact on shaping the year’s biggest cultural moments.

Ian Eisendrath, the executive music producer behind KPop Demon Hunters, told Billboard earlier this year that when it came to a smash like “Golden,” he knew that for the song to work, it couldn’t just be presented as a success in the plot of the film — it had to be a hit everywhere.

“The song couldn’t be our approximation of the K-pop hit — it actually had to be one,” he said. “The film directors [Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans] were amazing to work with, but they were tough customers because they knew exactly what they wanted. But the first time I played ‘Golden’ for them, they were like, ‘That’s it.’ ”

Oftentimes, Disney has been the leading studio behind such cross-­cultural moments. Signature hits from Frozen and Encanto previously reached the upper echelons of the Billboard charts: The former’s “Let It Go” reached No. 5 on the Hot 100 in 2014 and the latter’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” topped the chart in 2022. But in 2025, films like KPop Demon Hunters cracked the code without that level of established history.

Take F1: The Movie as an example. To help create a soundtrack that could pierce through the noise, Apple Studios teamed with Atlantic Records (the label behind original soundtracks to Barbie and Twisters) to curate a set that spoke to global audiences, featuring Tate McRae, Don Toliver, Rosé and more internationally recognizable names. “A big part of [our] general strategy was, ‘What are we doing that has a global feel?’ ” Atlantic president of West Coast Kevin Weaver told Billboard earlier in 2025. The strategy worked, with songs from McRae, Toliver and Rosé becoming top 40 hits on the Global 200.

Even when the year’s films didn’t quite manage to spin their songs into massive global hits, they still found their audience. While the soundtrack to Sinners only spent one week in the mid-100s of the Billboard 200, the set still ruled the Blues Albums chart for 19 nonconsecutive weeks. The soundtrack was also named by editorial staff one of Billboard’s top albums from the first half of the year, while the movie took home the top prizes (including best score and song for a feature film) at the 2025 Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

KPop Demon Hunters, along with Sinners and F1: The Movie, have already racked up nominations for the 2026 Grammys and Golden Globes — and all three films and their soundtracks are strong contenders for Academy Awards nominations, too. With such mile markers pointing to continued cultural relevance, it’s clear that when film and music work in tandem, their cultural impact only goes, as “Golden” suggests, “up, up, up.”

This story appears in the Dec. 13, 2025, issue of Billboard.