Episode Details

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the global phenomenon that is KPop Demon Hunters. Discover how this animated film shattered streaming records, topped charts in over 90 countries, and sparked conversations about culture, faith, and the future of media.

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone break down the movie’s surprising Christian themes, its unique approach to female characters, and why its message of personal responsibility and self-improvement resonates with audiences worldwide. They compare “K-Pop Demon Hunters” to Disney classics like “Frozen,” discuss the impact of K-pop stars in the film, and explore what Hollywood can learn from its success.

Whether you’re a fan of K-pop, animation, or just looking for a fresh perspective on modern storytelling, this discussion is packed with insights, humor, and cultural commentary.

Episode Transcript:

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to discuss a movie that will likely change the way films are produced globally. And because it accidentally snuck a bunch of Christian themes and very intentionally, a lot of people are like, oh, it’s accidental that Christian themes got into this.

We’ll go over it. It’s not accidental that Christian themes got into this. Nice a lot of anti DEI themes. Into the most, like the biggest movie phenomenon of all time. Mm-hmm. And I say, they say all time, you might be like, oh, you know, K-pop demon hunters was cute, but like how big was it exactly in in the last three months?

It has gotten more streams on its songs than Frozen has gotten on its songs in the 12 years since it was released. No significant margin. Oh my God. What? No. K-Pop. Human hunters shattered expectations to be the most watched original ever with 325 million views. [00:01:00] Eclipsing red notice, 236 million views in squid game season 1, 260 6 million views.

Wow. Top the charts in over 90 countries. The sound trek went platinum debuted at number eight on the billboard of two hundreds and made history as the first. With four simultaneous top 10, a hundred global hits. Deserve, though they’re, they’re catchy tunes. Was was golden number one. So good. It had your idol number four.

Oh yes. Soda pop, number five. Oh, love it. And how it’s done. Number 10. With. Golden alone. Top charts in the uk with over a million units sold in a sing along theatrical version grossing 19.2 million. Now that’s, that’s not a big a deal. But hold on, I wanna, I wanna compare it to frozen here.

So, since it’s released in, in terms of the number of streams that it’s songs have gotten, they’ve gotten around 3.5 billion streams. Okay? Frozen has gotten 2.5 to 3 billion over the past 12 years.

Simone Collins: 12 [00:02:00] years. Oh my God. If

Malcolm Collins: you’re talking weekly streams, the absolute peak for frozen was 50 million.

The peak for demon hunters was 141 million.

Whoa,

not moving Close my my mind. Monthly listeners for demon hunters, it peaked at 40 million for, for frozen, it peaked at 20 million. And, and the reason why this is so interesting to go over is because. A lot of people like are individually like, I like K-pop, demon hunters.

It was pretty cool and based. Yeah. And then but it doesn’t feel like a frozen, right? Like, no, it’s delightful. It’s fun. There’s, there’s conflict, there’s issues, but frozen’s just like. Culturally, we don’t feel like we’re in a frozen moment. Like the fact that I can compare K-pop demon hunter to something like frozen, and I’m like, this completely smashed frozen’s numbers.

You can hear that as a person and be like, but I thought I, that was like my thing, like, [00:03:00] like my private weird thing that I Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. Everyone thinks it’s like their little niche, like, oh,