Dear Gossips,

Maggie Kang, the mother of Huntr/x, who became an Oscar winner just over a week ago when Kpop Demon Hunters won Best Animated Feature (and also Best Original Song), was in Seoul on Saturday for the BTS Comeback concert that streamed live on Netflix.

Makes sense since the film was inspired in part by BTS and also, of course, KPDH is Netflix’s most watched original film of all time, around which they are building an entire franchise, including what they’re hoping will be some kind of world tour.

I posted last week about the new deal that Maggie and her partner Chris Appelhans were able to negotiate with Netflix, as reported by Puck… and what’s really interesting is that in his latest Puck newsletter, Matthew Belloni shares that:

“Thursday’s column on the ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ sequel deals has already become one of Puck’s most-clicked-on articles in a while.”

Puck’s subscribers include those who aren’t in the business and want to know the business of Hollywood but also industry players and dealmakers. The fact that so many people wanted to know about Maggie and Chris’s negotiating leverage with Netflix, to the point where that article generated that much interest tells you how the public continues to be fascinated by the KPDH story and also how amazed Hollywood has been by its ongoing success. In Hollywood, when a phenomenon like KPDH comes around, it often results in imitation and replication. Will they actually imitate and replicate the diversity and inclusion that made the movie so popular and so appealing? Do they actually understand that the secret is opening up opportunities for stories and storytellers who haven’t always been seen and heard? How much faith do you have that that’s the lesson they’ve taken away from Huntr/x and the honmoon?

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Photo credits: Jason Sean Weiss/BFA.com/Shutterstock

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