Even in the soup. In the Tiktok dancers, background music in Instagram videos, among the best selling costumes of Temu … and, of course, in the popularity lists and the recommendation algorithms of YouTube, Spotify and Netflix, where it was placed on Wednesday as the most watched film in the history of the platform (236 million views). The K-pop warriors It is even in the soup. Literally: the South Korean nood snacks With the characters of the film, a collaboration that has been possible “thanks to the fact that consumers voluntarily discovered the brand in the movie and shared it with pleasure,” says the press release.
In a scene, Rumi, Zoey and looks devour personalized snapshot noodles and fans began to fantasize in networks with really existed (the most skilled tags to sell them by ETSY). Companies heard and created the product. Experts call it “marketing reactive. “To the rebuild of success.” The genius of the film is that it has grown organically, the public has made the free campaign sharing and creating content, “says Noe Rivas, of the Academy of marketing Digital Seosve, which has a video on YouTube analyzing the case. “Now Netflix can sell what you want from The K-Pop warriors, of noodles and funkos, to sequelae or movie tickets. ”
The funkos leave in January, the sequel is already being negotiated and last weekend the film premiered in a thousand film rooms in several territories (and in Karaoke version), two months after its premiere in streaming. Something that is sometimes done in a timely manner to opt for the awards season (it sounds for two Oscar), but also in the US Weaponsthat had been on the billboard for longer.
Eight weeks it has been The Warriors dominating the conversation into networks (and in the houses where there are girls) and crowning the most watched and most listened to the world’s lists. However, he did not have a previous promotion campaign and, in principle, it was a niche content: an animated musical comedy about a trio of k-pop singers who double as a ancestral demons jackets in Korea camouflaged as a boy band. Nor is it folded by stars and is an original idea, and opera raw as director, by Maggie Kang, who until now has been an artist of storyboards of template for Dreamworks, Warner or Sony.
Seven years ago, this Canadian born in Seoul, told one of his bosses in Sony and the project began to walk. Slowly. Along the way the study put a co -director, also the artist of the house Chris Appelhans, who had directed The Dragon of Wishes in 2021 two two young short films. “Every day I thought, you’ll see how they park the project, but they never did,” Kang admitted The New York Times.
The production continued with a budget of 100 million dollars (85.5 million euros), but in 2023, with cinemas in full postpandemic fall, Sony decided not to risk a premiere and sold the distribution rights to Netflix in exchange for the 100 million cost, plus another 25.
And there begins the story of how a rare and mediation film becomes a probable new multibillionaire franchise, the Holy Grail of any study. They already say “the new Frozen”
These are some of the elements that caused it.
The “Netflix effect”
Looking back it is easy to think that Sony erred when selling to Netflix, but experts warn: having released in cinemas may not have happened the same. Neira calls it “The Netflix effect.” The cinemas distribution would have been more limited and much more expensive (the promotion cost can reach up to 50% of the budget), explains the expert. “Traditional circuits do not have Netflix’s capacity to call, with 300 million subscribers, in 190 countries, which can see the premiere without extra cost and without moving from home, but in addition, Netflix has a very precise knowledge of their audiences; the so criticized algorithm, allows them to detect niches, capture complementary audiences, react when something beggs … they can play in a way that you can play in a way that you can play in a way.
In addition, the premiere in Netflix, allows the mouth to mouth and the virality to be cooked without having to burst the box office the first weekend. “My stuffed kingdomThe paper house, the squid game … None of the big successes large Netflix had campaigns behind. “Instead of” paid media, “explains Neira, had” media won, “that is, free promotion: the conversation of coffee or school patio, comments on networks, the reels of parents dancing with their daughters K-Pop choreographies, the coverage in the press about the phenomenon as this same report … “If we are listed by the media campaign won from The K-Pop warriors, many blockbusters They could not pay it, ”says Neira.
Netflix also was not afraid of the niche: it has been buying and producing Korean content since 2017. And at home the girls can “go to see” the movie in loop.
Julieta, 12 years, disasters to jump in his living room while he sings for the umpteenth time in the karaoke version of Golden, One of the catchy successes of The K-Pop warriors, the first soundtrack that manages to place four songs at the time in the top 10 from the list Billboard Hot 100: in addition to Golden, Your Idol, Soda Pop y How It’s Done. They all adhere with velcro to the brain.
“The movie is not bad, but I like the songs a lot,” says the girl, a follower of Taylor Swift and Aitana. The Warriors They entered this house because Netflix’s algorithm was recommended to his twins, Graciela, fan of musicals. She has already seen her “like seven times” because, although she is “nothing otaku“(Manga fan),” It is not the same as always, like all those of Disney. “The mother of both is being” the toupery “:” I have not seen it because the aesthetics repels me, but I like that there is music, they sing a lot all the time. “
Music that goes alone
“The film’s key is that music is the promotion,” says Rivas who explains that the good marketing He must arrive “in the product ideation phase, not after, to sell something already done.”
Getting a soundtrack that is shared and reaches mass audiences is not easy or free, “you have to invest at the beginning of the process, in talent,” says Rivas. The executive music producer of the film, Ian Eisendrath, explains in a long interview in TudumNetflix’s internal medium, that although the themes were written with the story in mind, they wanted to make sure that they were sustained alone and were successes by themselves. For this they had producers such as Teddy Park from the Seal The Black Label (which leads Black Pink), or the German Lindgren (who has worked with BTS, in addition to Dua Lipa or John Legend). The idol (As the K-Pop artists are called) EJAE, it is Rumi’s voice when he sings, and was involved from the beginning in the music in which the successful Women’s Twice band also participates, thanks to Sony’s collaboration agreements with specialized stamps such as JYP, Visva or Republic Records, the K-Pop Division of Universal that is the one who finally published the soundtrack.
Viral feedback
In a very target turn, the movie itself explains that today it is not worth only with music. The struggle between Gasso/X, the band of hunter girls, and Saja Boys, that of demonic boys, in addition to liably kicking and swords, takes place on the battlefield of virality.
When the Saja leave the underworld, with their abs and their perfect bangs, they interpret the catchy Soda Pop In a place before a few early adopters (In real life, that avant-garde of users, would be the followers of the K-POP). These immediately begin to create videos with background music and dance (shoulder-hombro-biberon) that viralize, which makes people look for where that melody comes from and go looking for it to musical platforms, whose algorithm, seeing that they work, will promote them even more.
This feedback in real life ends up taking Netflix, while, in parallel, the platform, which knows its audience so well, is shooting: to the spectators of K-Drams, of anime, of children’s film, of musicals, of acidic comedies … and thus the snowball grows.
There is a strategy part. “The film premieres at the same time that the soundtrack in Spotify and YouTube, and in the channels of the latter the video clips of the songs have 100 million views, while the trailer is around 10 million,” says Rivas. And there is another part of luck, because in virality, as in any success, “there is always uncertainty, things that cannot be predicted,” Neira Zanja.
Authenticity and soul
The first time Lucia Negro, a 23-year-old opponent and K-Pop event organizer, listened to something about the film was on social networks, in a publication about the collaboration of the Twice band. “He had some skepticism,” he admits, but as the conversation grew in the community and out, he could not resist. “The soundtrack is impeccable, even the idols in Korea are praising it and doing reels With the themes, ”he says. Sony’s animation,“ the same as those of Spiderman Multiverso“, He explains with knowledge, he also seemed” cool. “His only but:” The plot whites the rigid world of k-pop. “
“The best marketing It is to make a good product, ”says Rivas, that is innovative, with a soul. The K-pop warriors It is, according to criticism, which has given him 97% on average in the aggregator Roten Tomatoes, underlining his catchy soundtrack, his humorous self -confidence, the rhythm of his plot, the aesthetics of his animation.
The public gives 98%. The destroyed Red alertwhich had been in the number one of Netflix since 2021 (and cost about 200 million), they have a 92% acceptance of the public but a poor 37% of the criticism. Maybe the question is not so much how it has exploded The K-pop warriors but why it surprises us so much that from time to time the algorithm encloses a good movie.