Studio execs learned the wrong thing from Kpop Demon Hunters.

I was working as an intern in a development studio when KPop Demon Hunters came crashing, slashing, and high-note-hitting into the animation scene. 

Originally created at Sony Animation, KPop Demon Hunters was doubted by execs. Sony sold the project to Netflix for a flat fee, meaning that after the completion of the film they forfeit all rights to the property. This also means that any chance of monetary gains or losses is transferred to Netflix. 

Despite this, Netflix execs were also ready to let the film experience a quiet release. Promotion was minimal compared to some of Netflix’s ‘Netflix Original’ content launches. The film originally had no scheduled theatrical release, no merch, and no cast promo tour. 

But a clip of the movies original song “Soda Pop” went viral, and fans of Kpop, animation, and demon slaying launched the film into an unpredicted stardom. Kpop Demon Hunters held the #1 movie spot on Netflix for 8 weeks, eventually becoming Netflix’s most-watched movie ever. 

But back to the boardroom, where my internship work was quickly interrupted with a new task: To go through the company’s client lists and find every Korean or Korean-adjacent artist.

To the execs at this company, the success of the movie was obviously its South Korean influences. After all, that was what had made Squid Games such a large success, right?

I disagree. The connection between these two breakout hits isn’t the culture they draw from, but the genuine passion of the creators behind it. 

Kpop Demon Hunters was stuck in development for nearly a decade, with the film’s creator, Maggie Kang, first attempting to pitch the show in 2018. Likewise, Squid Game was in development for over a decade, with the show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk first creating the concept around 2008. 

Rather than searching for shows that are explicitly Korean, execs should be searching for shows that are unique and passionate, with devoted and stubborn show runners. 

To prove my theory, let me take you to the other side of the world, as far from Kpop demons and South Korean secret societies as you can get, and allow me to introduce you to Canada’s breakout hit series Heated Rivalry.

Created by Jacob Tierney and based on a novel of the same name by Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry was slated for a Canada-only release on Crave. But international fan hype pushed HBO into making a hasty pick-up. The show now rates consistently among their top ten, with each episode garnering over 9 million views. 

The kicker? They had been offered the series before with a stake in producing and rejected it. Heated Rivalry actor Francois Arnaud explains how the series had originally been supported by major American studios, until Tierney refused to tone down the material for an American audience. Instead, Tierney took his production back to Canada. Accepting a much smaller budget in exchange for creative control. The result, a passion project that dominated the American television scene. 

And the next week at my internship that same client list was slapped down in front of me. What was I looking for this time? Sports Romance Dramas. 

There is a chart they often show when teaching Survivorship Bias in ethics classes. It shows a plane riddled with bullet holes and asks the viewer, this plane has returned from battle, where would you reinforce it with armor? Our first impulse is to place the armor where there are the most bullet holes. But that’s the fallacy. 

The solution is to place the armor where the bullets are not, because the planes that were shot in those areas never returned, and thus, were never included in the survey. And I know this isn’t the most apt comparison, but I still think of that graph when I think about the marketplace of stories. We need to stop looking at what’s already been done, and start looking at the spaces between.

Instead of trying to make duplicates of successful projects, we need to look at our global library and ask, what’s missing? 

Cause who knows, maybe it’s you.