Netflix’s ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ is Coming for an Oscar
Plus: ‘The Daily Show’ host Desi Lydic on ‘Foxsplaining’ in the Trump era
Greetings from an undisclosed South Carolina beach, where I intend to spend more of the week riding water slides and trying to finish Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland (the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another) rather than thinking about this year’s Emmy nominees. However, you can expect to hear from me again on Thursday, when I’ll break down the full Toronto International Film Festival slate, which will be unveiled in a rolling series of announcements this week. As you read this, you probably already know the Canadian premiere of Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player, the North American premiere of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and the world premiere of Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune have been added to the Galas and Special Presentations lineup alongside the likes of Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead, Man and Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. Check back here on Thursday for more on the Toronto and Venice lineups — I’ll get into it!
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Now onto the subjects at hand. Today, I’ve got a look at what could be an unusual and extremely populist best animated feature lineup, led by a Chinese megahit as well as a Netflix movie so huge it has got its own charting pop song to go with it. But first, I’m sharing a bit from my Zoom conversation with Emmy winner Desi Lydic, the Daily Show correspondent and host who was nominated for three Emmys this year — including talk series with her fellow Daily Show hosts, and two noms for writing and starring in the YouTube spinoff series, Desi Lydic Foxsplains.
It’s the second nomination in a row for the web-only series, in which Lydic, 44, adopts the character of a woman who has watched an unhealthy amount of Fox News and has transformed into one of its permanently furious blonde-haired hosts. Filmed with a phone and a ring light against a blank background, the show’s visual style started as a necessity of pandemic-era production. With TikTok videos delivered straight to the camera now emerging as a way that many Americans get their news, the videos manage to capture the insanity of both Fox News and the internet all at once.
Desi Explains It All
“It's so much more than just Fox News,” Lydic says of the focus of the Foxsplains series, which is often produced on an even quicker timeline than The Daily Show itself. “It’s social media, it’s internet culture — there’s no such thing as mainstream media now. Everyone’s got to have a hot take before really thinking it through. And it’s really fun to play with the mental gymnastics of how Fox News and others get there.”
Lydic and I spoke just a few hours before the bombshell news that Paramount-owned CBS was canceling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which came with speculation that The Daily Show — which airs on the Paramount-owned Comedy Central — could be next. There’s been no news on that front so far, but it’s clearly a precarious time for satire on television, a reality that no amount of Emmy nominations can likely change.
But when I spoke to Lydic, she emphasized the value of The Daily Show not just for its ability to draw humor from some rough news, but as a workplace. Lydic started as a correspondent on the show in 2015, and her fellow rotating co-hosts Jordan Klepper, Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta and, of course, Jon Stewart all have long histories there as well. Keeping this job is not just a matter of avoiding returning to waiting tables, which Lydic did while working as an actress in the early 2010s in bit parts on shows like Raising Hope and Two and a Half Men.
“It’s more creatively fulfilling than I could ever imagine, and I love who I get to work with,” Lydic says, specifically crediting Stewart, who returned to host Monday episodes last year, nearly 25 years after he first sat behind the desk. “He is everything that you want him to be. We are having the time of our lives.”
Whether that time is limited, Lydic and her colleagues still don’t know. (Stewart’s current contract is up at the end of the year.) But after 10 years of covering Donald Trump and all of the other chaos we’ve lived through, Lydic has learned to roll with the unexpected. “If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that I do not know what’s going to happen moment to moment,” she tells me. “All we can do is just try to stay engaged, try to keep entertaining our viewers and just hold on for dear life.”
KPop Oscar Hunters
As you’d know if you’ve been keeping up with my colleague Sean McNulty over at The Wakeup — or talking to parents at camp drop-off and at the community pool — the hottest movie on Netflix right now is not the one starring Charlize Theron or even the poop cruise doc you may have heard so much about. It’s the animated film KPop Demon Hunters, which isn’t just topping the global Netflix film charts more than a month after its release, but also boasts a soundtrack of bangers, including “How It’s Done,” “Takedown” and the No. 1 song on the Billboard global charts, “Golden.”
Inventively directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans and produced by Sony Pictures Animation, KPop Demon Hunters harnesses the powerful forces of Korean pop music, a Netflix audience already invested in Korean imports like Squid Game and the dynamic animation style that made Sony’s Spider-Verse films smash hits. Despite its winkingly silly title, the film is punchy and clever, following three girls who are part of the pop group Huntr/x by day and, well, hunt demons on the side. (Huntr/x is a fictional act, but real-life recording artists Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami provide the group’s vocals.) It’s hard not to wonder just how much bigger it could have been with a theatrical global release. However, with a Netflix-reported 24.2 million views in the week ending July 13, and more than 40 million views since its debut on June 20, KPop Demon Hunters is plenty big regardless.
This kind of success could be its own reward. But Netflix is eyeing Oscars for KPop Demon Hunters, not just for “Golden” in original song but in the animated feature category as well. Knowing the movie was better than the average straight-to-Netflix effort, the streamer quietly released KPop Demon Hunters in enough theaters to meet film Academy requirements. And although Netflix has another animated release coming later this year, the Netflix Animation project In Your Dreams, the distributor also sees a lane for KPop Demon Hunters. As one Netflix insider put it to me, “Why not both?”
The Netflix people I spoke to seem aware that even with a boatload of strong reviews — including being designated a critic’s pick by the New York Times — a title like KPop Demon Hunters may be a tough sell with the Academy, which is more international than ever but still skews older and away from your typical K-pop demographic. But aside from Disney’s Zootopia 2 coming later this fall (the original won animated feature in 2017 over Moana), there’s no real animated behemoth for the Oscar race thus far, leaving plenty of room for surprise. Pixar’s Elio was disappointing both critically and financially, Paramount’s new Smurfs has been received even worse and most of the biggest family-friendly hits of the year have been live-action hybrids like A Minecraft Movie and Lilo & Stitch.
I’m also very curious what might happen with the Chinese mega-hit Ne Zha 2, which is receiving a dubbed English-language release in August courtesy of A24. (It’s only the studio’s second animated release, after 2021’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.) Ne Zha 2 is by far the highest-grossing film worldwide of the year — it’s made nearly $1 billion more than second-place Lilo & Stitch — and would almost certainly be the highest-grossing Oscar nominee (your move, Avatar: Fire and Ash). Oscar voters may not care as much as ABC and the Academy about bringing in more popular nominees. Still, they could certainly guarantee some eyeballs by nominating Ne Zha 2, KPop Demon Hunters or both.
It’s hard to predict what the animated branch might do — these are the people who nominated the little-seen Memoir of a Snail over Moana 2 last year. However, the music branch, which oversees nominations for original song, is even more unpredictable (outside of always finding room for 16-time nominee Diane Warren). Still, I’ll maintain high hopes for “Golden,” not just an insanely catchy hit song, but integral to the story of KPop Demon Hunters to boot. Not that it will be easy, as “Golden” faces some significant competition. The Wicked sequel, unlike the first installment, will feature original songs for stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Meanwhile, Smurfs has two songs from Rihanna — her first new music in three years — including “Anyone,” an Oscar-friendly ballad that hasn’t been officially released (apologies in advance, but you’ll have to buy a ticket to Smurfs to hear it for now). However, if you, like me, hope the original song category continues to reward tracks that have an essential role in the narrative — including recent winners “Naatu Naatu” from RRR, “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie and this year’s “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez — “Golden” would be right for the moment.
Katey are your kids watching/talking about KDH??