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The combination of Sony Animation’s storytelling with Netflix’s huge subscriber base has helped make KPop Demon Hunters one of the biggest movies in Netflix history. More than six weeks into its run, it is not just still sitting high on the streamer’s chart but is getting more viewers than it did at launch. Despite its success, KPop Demon Hunters is the result of a strange corporate partnership between two entertainment giants that only happened because Sony passed on the original project.

Seven years ago, Maggie Kang, who was working at Sony Animation, approached the company with a pitch for a movie about KPop idols who also happened to be demon hunters. After partnering with Chris Appelhans as co-writer and co-director, the pair put together a more formal pitch for the movie. And then Sony passed on KPop Demon Hunters.

“We pitched the movie to Sony,” Kang explained in a recent interview. “And they passed on it. It’s a big risk to do a movie with a full Asian cast on something that’s very culturally Korean, which hasn’t been done before. K-pop was at its peak, but it could have plateaued. There was a lot of uncertainty with that. So we pitched it to Netflix. We had a full draft, a couple of demo songs, a ton of amazing art and a couple of scenes that I had [story]boarded that we cut. And there were three different animatics samples that we shared; and they loved it. And then we were off to the races.”

However, Netflix couldn’t just take on producing KPop Demon Hunters immediately. Both Kang and Appelhans were Sony employees, so it became “a different kind of relationship,” according to Kang.

“The creative was primarily at Sony Pictures Animation and then Netflix was the distribution and investor in a way,” Appelhans said. “They footed the bill and they gave notes, but the core team was Sony.”

The outcome is probably an ideal one for both companies. Sony gets their logo at the start of an animated film that has legitimate Oscar buzz, particularly around its music, without much financial risk, while Netflix has one more hit movie to round out its ever-growing library. And we got KPop Demon Hunters out of the deal.

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