Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, the directors behind Netflix animated phenomenon “KPop Demon Hunters,” as well as the film‘s main songwriter EJAE, accepted the Spark Award at IndieWire Honors 2025 ceremony on Thursday December 4, at Nya West in Hollywood. In their speeches, the three discussed their journeys to make the film, and thanked the many people responsible for bringing Huntr/x to life.
Kang spoke first, discussing how the film served as a personal journey for her and her attempts to represent her Korean identity on the big screen. She thanked the fans for supporting the movie and helping to turn it into a major phenomenon.
“Thank you IndieWire for this incredible honor,” Kang said in her speech. “This movie has been such a personal journey for me. So this means more than you know. This movie exists because I simply just wanted to see my culture, my Korean culture, represented on the big screen. And when I came up with a concept and pitched it to a producer friend over seven years ago, I had no idea that this would be the reception. I really had no idea that this movie about three silly Korean women and Kpop would be watched by so many people all around the world. So I would love to thank the fans for supporting this movie, for finding it, loving it, and really spreading the word, because without them, you know, I don’t think people would have found it.”
EJAE spoke next, thanking the directors for trusting her during the process and allowing her to provide her singing voice for main character Rumi. EJAE also took the time to thank many of her collaborators who contributed to the highly successful soundtrack of the film, which has since been nominated for several Grammys.
I’d really like to thank the directors, thanks guys for this amazing opportunity. Thank you for trusting in me to sing the song and also writing. I really am so just proud of you guys with me. You work really, really hard. I need to thank Netflix and Sony as well as Ian Eisendrath, our music director and music executive producer, he really helped guide us. And also co-writer Mark Sonnenblick and the team making those amazing tracks,” EJAE said. “A lot of people do this job you guys, it’s a big music team. It was really a collaborative work. And as a Korean American woman, I’m super proud of [Maggie].”
Appelhans finished the speech by saying that the film took years to make, and came from a desire to create something new. He thanked the huge team responsible for bringing their vision to life, jokingly calling them “flesh artists” who put six years of work into the end product.
“As you guys can tell, this movie took a lot of people and a lot of dedication. It’s really awesome to get this award,” Appelhans said in his speech. “We wanted to make something new and weird and awesome. We’ve been doing this for a long time, decades of writing and storyboarding and songwriting, production designing and animating, and the movie seemed to require from us everything we’ve ever learned in our lives, including a team of 4 or 500 human artists, who gave everything for five, six years to make it. So we’re just really grateful. It means a lot. This is a cool group, and we’re really, really honored.”
Since its release in June, “KPop Demon Hunters” has received critical acclaim and has become the most popular film in Netflix’s history. Recently, it won Best Animated Feature at the New York Film Critics Circle.