THE MAKING OF A SMASH

KPOP DEMON HUNTERS' ORAL HISTORY

- STORY: MELENA RYZIK / NYT

Before Rumi was the purple-haired superstar of KPop Demon Hunters, she was a painting on the bottom of a skateboard.

Maggie Kang, a director of the movie, and her husband, Radford Sechrist, a director and storyboard artist, designed the character for another project; a friend painted the deck.

That project was about a skate crew. But “I liked her so much”, Kang said. “I just plucked her out and made this movie around her.” (And the name stuck. The couple also christened their daughter Rumi.)

The fictional Rumi was born around nine years ago, evolving into the heroine of KPop Demon Hunters, the stylish animated megahit about K-pop vocalists who moonlight as demon slayers. It is a front-runner in several Oscar categories, including best original song, for the chart-topping anthem Golden, performed by Huntr/x, Rumi's all-female trio, in a battle of the bands with the rival Saja Boys.

It took years to bring this unlikely idea to fruition — and it spawned an even more unexpected fandom, with singalong screenings and kids around the globe dressing as the characters. Although, Kang said, “we didn’t craft this movie thinking that it was for children. It was really for a more mature audience. And really for ourselves”

In interviews from New York, Los Angeles and Seoul, South Korea, members of the creative team as well as the stars Arden Cho, who voiced Rumi, and Ahn Hyo-seop, who played Jinu, the Saja Boys’ leader, filled in the backstory behind the most-watched movie in Netflix’s history.

THE ORIGINS

In 2018, Kang developed a pitch for producer Aron Warner; as a storyboard artist, she had worked on a Shrek movie with him.