INTERVIEW: ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Directors Maggie Kang And Chris Appelhans Discuss The Inspiration, Costume Designs And The Future

KPop Demon Hunters, an original animated film by Sony Pictures Animation and distributed on Netflix released on June 20, 2025. It follows follows K-Pop girl group Huntrix, consisting of Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong), and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo), who lead double lives as secret demon hunters dedicated to protecting their fans from supernatural forces. Huntrix faces off against a rival boy band known as the Saja Boys, whose members are secretly demons. The original animated movie explores themes of sisterhood, Korean mythology, Korean culture, public perception and the toll holding a secret can take on the people close to you.

We got to sit down with the directors of KPop Demon Hunters, Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, and discuss how Korean/KPop culture is integrated into the film with its costume designs, creating female superheroes who were relatable and expressive through animation, collaborating as co-directors and the possible future of a KPop Demon Hunters franchise.

In animation, we’re used to our main characters having one iconic outfit throughout the entire film and sometimes there’s a possible outfit change at the end in preparation for a huge battle. Unlike live-action projects, it’s rare to see an animated character going through numerous outfits. With KPop being the focus of KPop Demon Hunters, it only made sense that Huntrix had numerous outfits throughout the film that were all iconic to represent the industry and the effort/detail to attention that goes into what they wear from an everyday outfits to the outfits they wore on tours and in music videos. Here’s what Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans had to say:

Maggie Kang: We had an incredible art team who were kind of dying to do something like this. I think we had over 100 different articles of clothing made, you know, basics, and you could swap out colour and texture. Then officially Rumi has 26 costume changes and those are variations of, like, certain costumes.

We also have different makeup looks, pyjama looks, the beat-up look of the girls and then the no-makeup thing. We just had an incredible team who were all fans of KPop and wanted to create costumes and design costumes that were really cool and that we really haven't seen in animation before. A lot of the costumes were dictated by story. The gold outfits – we wanted to really put emphasis on the strong shoulders that you see so that the girls felt like warriors. obviously the gold metal pieces for the golden idea and a lot of drawing inspiration from traditional Korean elements, like, from the armoury down to embroidery that is on most of the girls.

Every one of the girls has some sort of traditional design element, and then they have that norigae, the kind of woven charm that they all wear. So, yeah, it was just a group effort.

Chris Appelhans: I think the movie also kind of tells you what it needs. Although it's a crazy number of costumes, it needed them. You got several different performances and a story where the costumes are kind of part of the plot, and then the girls have to be effortlessly fashionable when they go to the random healer workshop.

It just kept demanding these things, and we're like, Sorry, everybody, but we really need a cool costume here, here, here, here, and here.

Maggie Kang: Our producers would be like, “do you really need this costume?” “I guess”.

Watch the full interview on YouTube:

About KPop Demon Hunters

KPop Demon Hunters . © Netflix

Premiere Date: June 20, 2025

Executive Producer: Michelle Wong

Writers: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans, Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan

Directors: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans

Production: Sony Pictures Animation

Distribution: Netflix

Cast: Arden Cho, May Hong, Ji-young Yo, Ahn Hyo-seop, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, Ken Jeong, Byung-hun Lee

Synopsis: Three members of the K-pop girl group Huntrix – Rumi, Mira, and Zoey – who lead double lives as secret demon hunters dedicated to protecting their fans from supernatural forces. Huntrix faces off against a rival boy band known as the Saja Boys, whose members are secretly demons.