265 | KPop Demon Hunters Directors: Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans on Balancing Heart, Humor & Music

This week, we’re joined by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, the writer-directors of KPOP DEMON HUNTERS, to unpack the craft behind one of the year's biggest movies.

From finding the emotional core of their story to shaping "Golden" into a late-breaking "I Want" song, Maggie and Chris share how they balanced friendship, romance, comedy, worldbuilding, and music all in one movie.

We also dive into the messy joy of writing in editorial, why tiny character moments like "Couch, Couch, Couch" carry so much weight, and how specificity in both music and story can unlock something universal.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Lorien: Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Lorien McKenna, and today I am really excited to talk to KPop Demon Hunters co-directors and co-writers Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans. Maggie is a director at Sony Pictures Animation, where she's worked on a number of celebrated animated films, including The Croods: A New Age, Kung Fu Panda 3, and Minions: The Rise of Gru. She also served as Head of Story on the Lego Ninjago movie. Chris is also a director at Sony Pictures Animation. He wrote and directed the hit Netflix film Wish Dragon, and has worked on beloved movies like Coraline, the Princess and the Frog, and Rise of the Guardians. Together, they co-directed and co-wrote K-Pop Demon Hunters.

The film has become a global phenomenon, becoming the most watched original title in Netflix history with 266 million views. Its original soundtrack shot to number one and the top 10 spots on multiple music and streaming charts, making history as the first film soundtrack ever to have four songs in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10. Welcome to the show. 

Maggie: Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thanks. 

Lorien: Awesome. So before we get into our conversation we have a segment called Adventures in Screenwriting where we talk about our weeks. And I usually go first, so I'll kick us off. So all week I have been writing, like all day long into the night writing.

And I have a deadline. I wanna deliver this project on Saturday, and I have a pitch on Monday. And so I've been working for that deadline. But I realized in confirming that pitch with my manager that it was actually. Today, this morning I just got off the pitch with it, so I had to stop my project. I spent a couple of hours like, oh my God, okay, I have this rough idea.

And I came up with a whole pitch for a show and all the things really fast. Wow. And I love it. And the pitch went really well. And I'm, it was one of those pitches that you have where you're like, I feel so good doing it. I feel so good. After they gasped, they smiled, they did the things that you want to happen.

Who knows what will happen. There's, some of those, sometimes you have a pitch so good and you're like, oh, there's no way. It was just so good that like they're just I would love to work on this project and with this team, but we'll see. So I learned two important lessons.

One I need to trust my instincts 'cause I tend to, can be prone to second guessing, overcomplicating, which I know. Yeah. In feature animation is a huge thing, right? 'cause you have so much time to swirl and not enough time at all. 

Maggie: Yeah. 

Lorien: The other one is double check when my meetings are, 'cause I've done this before. Once I showed up to a meeting a whole week early. The Tuesday before at 9:00 AM and I was like, why aren’t you guys ready? I was like, halfway through the meeting. He's like you're a week early. And I was like cool. All right, awesome. That's, and we just went with it and it was funny.

But yeah. So that's been my week, but so I actually feel pretty good about this week 'cause I've been writing and working and I came up with a good idea that I love, which makes me feel like, oh, I do have ideas and I can execute them. 'cause sometimes you fall into that like pit where you're like, do I have anything to say?

Yeah. What am I doing? I don't know. You probably don't have that experience because you know you're so successful and have this wonderful movie anyway.

Chris: Oh, no. Oh no. Everybody gets it. Everybody gets that. 

Lorien: Exactly. Yeah. I think that half of being an artist is doubting yourself and getting out of it.

Maggie: Yes. My week, yes. Oh, my week. I wasn't creatively productive as you, you have. But I did, I'm just on a big award circuit and traveling I just got back from a. Week long trip to Korea where I was at the Poon Film Festival. I did a few events met some amazing people. Met a bunch of idols as well, which was really fun.

And I just got back on Tuesday morning. And then yesterday I traveled from LA to Ottawa for the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival. So I'm not really committed to a time zone at the moment.

Lorien: You know where you are, right? 

Maggie: I do, yes. Which, yes yeah, I know where I am, which, yeah, and I was able to make my flight times and stuff. Yeah I'm I'm there. 

Lorien: It sounds exciting, but it can be exhausting. 

Maggie: Yeah. Yeah. But I, right now it's it's mostly like adrenaline running on adrenaline and coffee and a few hours of sleep here and there, but fun. It's fine. So it's like parenting. Yeah. 

Lorien: Yeah. Okay. Chris, how was your week?

Chris: It was good. It was good. I'm yeah, intercepted Maggie as she came into LA and from Seoul, and now we're both off in Ottawa. And then I'm gonna go tomorrow to SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design.

They're gonna give us some lovely awards where film Maggie's gonna go back and sleep and see her family, which is long overdue. I also this week really tried we're gonna get into a pretty intense. Trip around Europe. So week after this. And so I was trying to squeeze in a couple nice stretches with my son Alexander, who's five oh.

And I'm finding that just making sure that I get a few hours a day with him and him with me, is, makes it a lot easier to contemplate not seeing him for three weeks. And trying to almost load up his little battery. Yeah. And as you guys know it. Any age under, I don't know, 16. They're changing all the time.

They're just like a slightly different human every week. So trying to be on the ground with that and be present for it has been really nice and I don't know. Then I think I'll be able to enjoy being traveling and not have too much of that, backwards regret yeah. Yeah, 

Lorien: That's good. It's hard to prioritize that stuff, right? 'cause you get so excited about Yeah. It's. The, the adrenaline and the traveling and the award and everything, and then remembering, oh wait, I am a human under here and I'm a parent. And it's hard to switch between those things too sometimes. Do you guys find that?

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like even even Maggie and I talking, we have our occasional just creative conversations and that'll leave some seed in the back of my mind about a, an idea, a story idea, and. My son wants to like race his Lego cars down the driveway and I do too, but my brain is also wants to go and work on that thing.

And so I have to be shut up for a second and just be here and make race car noises for two hours. It's really hard. Yeah. But it's always, yeah. It's weird. It's weird how they become a kind of intrusive thought if I'm not careful about it. Right now I have a lot of long plane flights to think about that stuff.

Maggie: Everything requires our time. Like we have Yeah, the touring, the movies stuff commodity. Yeah. But then our families, our spouses like, yeah, everything feels like, yeah, we just spread pretty thin. 

Lorien: Yeah, it sounds like a time, especially, how long were you on the film making it.

Maggie: I was on it for almost exactly seven years to the day from pitch to release. Oh, wow. Oh wow. I think Chris, you were five, right? Is it a little over five? 

Chris: About five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Lorien: So how different you are from those years ago, how different your family is now? Yeah. It's really hard not to get sucked into this, I don't wanna say obsession, having worked on films for just as many years, it's like when you come out of it, even for the screening cycle, you're like, yes. When you come out you're like, oh God, and now we have to go back in. It's a strange cycle in animation feature that you're in. To get a hold of And then you have to do it after the movie too. Yeah. But I'm sure it's exciting too. I'm sure it's fun. You guys made great this amazing movie. That's great. Yeah, it's great. Yes. That has been in my house a lot. My daughter is currently teaching herself how to sing the songs in Korean.

Oh, aww. So she's doing that. She knows the dances. I was rewatching it 'cause I wanted to. Sort of refresh when I, talked to you and she's oh, where are you? And she had to come down. She's 13. And so she loves that. I was watching it. And she has some pretty hard story questions for you that I'll ask later.

Chris: Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Lorien: They're pretty blunt, so I'm like, how do I refresh? We like judgmental. We're just, here's our question. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, this movie's huge, right? It, the songs make the charts, then you've got like the, it's just got a lot of energy around it. Have you had a fan reaction that has stood out to you? 

Chris: Oh, so many. 

Maggie: So many. I don't know. I think I. I think when we first started to get the reactions from the idols, that felt very 'cause making this movie, one of the biggest concerns we had was, will it be accepted by the K-pop fans?

But also what do idols, what will idols think of it? But it was so like quickly embraced by the community, even by the artists themselves. And even talking to them, they're like. They're like, yeah, there's things that happen that won't, wouldn't happen in our lives, like we would never do a co-ed, fan sign but it does feel like a very heightened fantasy version of our lives, and it's very validating and I don't know. One of my favorite things is watching Jin of BTS watch it and just try to sing Golden and get frustrated. Like, all of us, like not being able to hit the high notes. I felt like that was so real. And yeah, just the, just seeing them love the movie like everybody else has been really great.

Chris: The one who was so mad in the climax, he was like calling Gino a Pablo. Oh yeah. He watched the whole thing and live streamed every, basically, every section of it. And he cried in the climax and then he got mad when Junior died, and I was like, yeah. I was like, stupid. Yeah. I can't believe he's watching our movie and so engaged in it. 

Lorien: That's awesome. So that's actually my daughter's question. Why did he have to die? You don't know the answer or you don't want to talk about it? No, we can talk about it. Okay. Just from like a story perspective? Yes. In terms of you have the friend, the movie is so much about the friendship of these three girls and then, secrets, betrayals, insecurities.

The inner demon, all that stuff. And then you have this great love interest. And then, he sacrifices himself. Yes. Which is interesting. 'cause usually a female character is the one who does that. So it was for me, I was like. That's right. Take the leap, but what was the, how did that further the story in terms of where you were going with that?

Maggie: I think you just said it like it's, he sacrifices himself and in that sacrifice, it didn't feel right for him to. Stay and get everything that he wanted. 

It, it wouldn't be a complete sacrifice if he didn't, yeah. Go away. So I think that's mainly why we decided on that.

And, he's, he made mistakes. He's at fault and. And and so it was this ultimate sacrifice that he made, to contribute and save the world and help Rumi. But, he couldn't get everything, 

Chris: Yeah. I think I, I think we talked a lot about the fact that it, like a great Rumi and Gino were, they weren't just like into each other.

They were like, they had a life changing type of. Relationship like a, which is any great love story is it's about romance, but it's also like the other person alters you. That's what makes it really special. And it felt for, like Maggie said, for a character like Gino who fundamentally is haunted by a choice that he made, that he has decided defines his character, and then she says, maybe not, maybe you still have.

Some purchase over that, you can make a new choice and that can be a new version of you. Then he needed to, he needed to choose something that wasn't selfish. And his first mistake was super selfish. And so I, if he doesn't do that, I don't think, I don't think that Rumi's effect on him is really earned, and so to me I think we both felt like it was super romantic because what's more, more than kissing somebody? What's more romantic than, like dying on behalf of their message and their mission. Yeah. I don't know. Also, 

Lorien: And he does get what he wants. He has some memories taken- 

Maggie: Away. Yeah. It also I also just think it makes him more, more desirable. Just very unattainable demon boy. 

Chris: Yeah. 

Maggie: So he just, he should just remain. Not attainable. 

Lorien: I think I got your point of view here on that. Yeah, I love it. Okay, so I really wanna talk about the story and the writing you guys have mentioned and writing and animation is its own unique thing right there isn't a script. You probably have versions of the script, but as you get into development and moving down the pipeline, it's sequence based and it's chunks of the script all over the place. It, you guys are responsible for keeping the whole thing in your head the whole time, right?

The vision, yes. Yeah. What were your sort of was there a word you had up in the story room? Here is the focus, does it meet this word or an idea, or, when new ideas come up, new sequence ideas, people are pitching things. How did you decide okay, let's try that, or we're not gonna try that?

Chris: I, yeah. I think the big advantage that we had as partners was that we I wrote the first draft together. And I remember when I started, when I first sat down with Maggie, she already had, I think this really clear vision of the high concept of, girls that are pop stars, that are demon hunters.

I think she already knew. That she wanted this kind of funny, silly, and awesome and stupid female characters, which was like amazing. And I think she even had stuff like Korean demonology and even a sense of, I think, I don't know, I felt like I could already tell the tone she wanted, which was right up my alley.

So there's this, all these ingredients that are already sitting there. And then I think for me, the. The idea that we could make the story about the power of music and the way it connects us, that kind of fit really well with everything that she was thinking about. And that from, that really led to that kind of sent us off into some of the Korean folk dancing and the traditions of as all cultures have of like song and dance as this war against darkness, and that led us to the hunters and the home moon, which is like, how the heck do we visualize a thing that these girls can be serving that's a reflection of a manifestation of that musical thing. And so I think within that first draft.

All of those ideas were at play and already talking to each other and I remember very specifically crunching on the third act and Maggie and I were it. It was still bit. COVID work from home days. So we just kept sending final draft files back and forth and writing a couple scenes and pass it over to Maggie Wright and send it back.

And we're just ping ponging the third act back and forth. And just at some point we just started texting dude, this is fucking good. This is so emotional. I'm I, this movie has such a good ending. And I think that was. Critical in some ways that we knew where we wanted to end, even from that first draft and kind of hung onto it. I don't know. That's my memory of it, but-

Maggie: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we weren't completely there with the tone in the first draft, but we were getting there, with the girls and their voices and Yeah. And the comedy. But it was. Probably the only movie that I'd ever worked on, where the third act was and what we needed to emotionally earn at the end of the movie was so there.

We figured out the beginning and the end pretty quickly. And then it was most of the hard lifting. It was all heart lifting. But really the bigger changes within the, from the first draft came in the second in, the middle part of the movie and to the point where like we wrote scenes, I don't know, I think.

Chris, I don't know if I'm right, but like maybe two or three scenes that we didn't ever even think about, we didn't even really write. Yeah. And we had those, we just pitched it to each other, like in a room. As we're watching the cut and being like, this scene, I think we need a scene here that does this and this, and we would just write it, pitch it to each other, and then be like, okay I tell the crew like, Hey, can you guys carve me out three hours?

I always say three, but then it ends up being like five. We'll go and storyboard the thing or eight and we put it up and then, it's okay, this is closed. We, nip and tuck, and then it's off to production. So we, there were a few scenes that were very quickly written like that.

And there, there were vital scenes that that the work of connecting. Different ideas. Or different characters together. And they're actually one of my, some of my favorite scenes in the movie. 

Lorien: That's awesome. Yeah. How do- it feels like, you know that those three three girls are the center of the story.

Did you ever find times in the writing where you lost them a little bit? Or you got, you tipped a little too deeper into the demon part of it and how you found that balance back? 

Maggie: I think initially even in the first draft, the Rumi and Gino’s connection was so much stronger. And so it was always like and we didn't have it completely figured out, but it was definitely more emotionally satisfying that part of the movie.

And probably for a while maybe two, yeah. Two, maybe three screenings, and then we were like, okay, we need to do some heavy lifting on the girl stuff. And we did that. And it's a it's interesting. I think, and we've talked about it in the past too, where some, it depends on the mood I'm in, maybe. We both have expressed oh, this time, like on this watch I connected more to the girl story or the next day we're watching it was like, this time I was more concentrated on the Rumi genus stuff. So it did, it does feel like we got to a place where it was pretty equally balanced, I think.

And, and those few scenes that I just talked about, I think those really helped like connect the two together so that it felt like it was, 'cause for a while they did feel a little disjointed. And Rumi was on two different paths which, it's, yeah. That is the movie, but you do want it to be one journey, 

Lorien: Right? And the balance. Yeah. 

Maggie: It felt like it. 

Chris: Oh, I was gonna, I was just thinking an exact thing, which is we I think the thing that made the second act finally tick was figuring out, 'cause the scenes between Rumi and the girls and Rumi and Gino are other than one, they're inherently on two tracks.

They're never, they're separate scenes. They're not in the same scenario except for the fan signing. So it was really important that as Ruess, 'cause it's about Rumi's worldview evolving, right? And becoming more nuanced. And she learns to offer grace to gnu and then maybe a little bit.

To herself eventually. And she's floating that idea to the girls. And what made that second act tick was that the scene started to relate to each other. Yeah. That something genius said when he and Rumi met, she would float that same concept in a conversation with the girls and they would shoot it down and that would tell you like, here's roomy testing out.

Do we have to be this black and white about the world? And as long as those scenes kept informing each other. Then the two storylines felt related that Gino was affecting Rumi, Rumi's affecting the other girls. There's a point where it all goes bad, but that all that work is part of what makes the ending feel earned.

And so that was like a really tricky, but. Definitely, like Maggie said, until we did that, it felt like kind of two separate movies that weren't talking to each other. 

Lorien: Ah. And then how do you, when that happened, when you're like, okay, are you looking at the whole thing again? As a writer, right? Yeah.

Because writer and director, it's tricky to separate them when you're in. Anywhere but. In feature animation too. 'cause you're considering the look and everything in terms of how you're writing it. Look like how do they move, what's the world building? Okay, we're on two different tracks.

How do you two, like who calls the alarm? Okay. We need to have, is it that meeting you guys have or does one person take a pass? Or are you pitching things to each other? 

Maggie: I think that was the most challenging thing about this movie is everything had to, it was just little meters. Like we were just adjusting mostly.

They weren't huge changes throughout, the second act, it was like, okay, this is a little too much here. Like push, push that down. Okay, we need a little bit more of this. So it was just like little things and. Everything had to line up perfectly and be balanced and, on top of pacing and comedy and every, and everything else that it had to do.

So that was the most delicate thing about it. And every time we were told like, okay, we need to send three sequences into production tomorrow. We're like. Crap. Which ones do we put in? Because we, like you're saying, like you change one little thing and every other, it effect, it's a domino effect.

And ev you have to adjust something in three, four scenes. You can't just do it in one. So it was hard and by the end of it you're in the middle of it, you're okay, one of the advantages of feature animation is that you can send things into layout, but then. You could still change it.

Yes. You could still change camera in animation even though it's out of layout. And you could change dialogue up until the recording session where the artists are where the actors are delivering the lines. So there were times when we would be like, okay, we need to get this line because it wasn't in the cut or whatever because we were just constantly.

Finessing story all the way to the end to the very possible last minute that we could. So it, that was like, it was just a lot of place to spin. 

Lorien: I think there's a misconception about writing and animation, which is that. It starts the beginning with the director, the writer, the editor. Yeah. Your department leads.

And it goes all the way until the very, very end, until film out, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're rewriting even if you have a note for an animator. 

Chris: Yeah. 

Lorien: Tweak this performance or, it's a huge responsibility. Totally. So writing and directing an animated movie is like this.

It's everything, every department, and it's not just you write a script and then it goes to story and layout and no, these come together in animation. 

Maggie: Yeah. I think with you work on a draft until you're in a good place, good enough place to go into storyboards, and that's when the real writing kind of happens is it feels like that's really the pro, that's the real process. Yeah. Something gets, and then you write again, an editorial, and then you write again. You're just constantly writing. 

Lorien: Yeah.

Chris: I remember the- I remember the penultimate scene with Rumi and Selene in Dark Night of the Soul, where she really finally confronts her and like we had an edit session that went till 9:00 PM or something.

And then our producer Michelle was like guys, we have to record this scene tomorrow. 'Cause we have Arden. And yeah, we had talked so much about it for weeks about what it was or wasn't, what belonged in there, what didn't. And so we just like. Found an empty office, sat in some fluorescent couch in the Sony lot until midnight and just finally cracked it.

And that's part of the other thing that's so interesting is you're like waiting for the movie to reveal itself to you. And sometimes you need to insane pressure of, having it in production and having these characters really fully brought to life. And even in that last minute, you finally understand what you, the story you've been trying to tell about them.

And I just remember writing it like, I don't even think we did pages, we just were in a Google doc writing the, I don't even remember by the end of that I think I blocked that out. 

Maggie: Blocked that out. 

Chris: I just remember driving home that night and being like, oh, we have a scene now. We have a scene for, worthy of-

Maggie: Yeah-

Chris: That you could go into and really direct an actor around because it had a shape and a climax and all that. So I don't know how you plan for that. I really, I don't think you can. Yeah, you can't predict it. You just have to be ready to ride the rollercoaster. 

Lorien: The music obviously is such a part of it.

And when did the songwriters come in? Do you have, when you're writing the script, are you like, here's a song that needs to accomplish these things, or do you actually write the lyrics? Or when is that collaboration happening?

Maggie: I, we knew really early on where the songs would be and, and what they needed, like what they needed to be like what's, what purpose they needed. Not completely, but generally, like we knew like the duet was this that, Rumi and Gino connecting and opening up to each other and how it's done.

We knew that wanted, we needed that to be this anthemic song intro, introducing the latest iteration of hunters with. This kind of subtext of the legacy of the women that they've carried through the ages and now they've they've inherited this thing and and then something like Golden, that was the last song that we really figured out story-wise what it needed to do.

And so I think, for a lot of us it's really great to see it just being so loved because it was so hard to get to it. Like we didn't know. What it needed to be. And we don't have, we have very limited time in this movie. One of the things that made the storytelling so challenging, but also we really wanted to do it this way, is because.

It's hard to tell a non origin story of new superheroes, new characters, and and the reason why we wanted to do that. There, there are a few reasons. One was, I personally, I just I don't like movies where you're like, great, let's start with let's, K-pop demon, ooh, pop stars.

And then you're like spending, I don't know, five, five minutes with them like. Not pop stars this isn't what I signed up for. Like I want them to be cool and flashy. The, the whole time. But another big reason, and this is probably the main one, is we wanted Rumi’s shame to be this lived in shame.

We didn't want it to be this new thing, so it felt like we needed to just. Meet her and know about the shame that she's just been stewing in and just, and tell that history, like through the flashbacks and get, her journey through, through like just seeing stories where past. So that was really.

The biggest reason why we chose that, but it's hard. It was really hard to do. And at one point Kristine Belson was like, guys, this might be too hard and it's okay if we just, we call it that and we go back to doing the original story. But, we stuck to it and I think we got to a place where.

We're really happy about. But but with Golden, we later like pretty late realized oh, this is like Rumi's. I want song. What that usually happens in most musicals. And we'd always pitch this movie as a non-traditional musical. And so we didn't think that we needed that kind of song, but we did.

So usually the I Want Song is the second song. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was like the second song, and and so we were told like, Hey guys, this has to be the song. And we, it took us a while, but we realized that, and it became the song where. We got, get a little snippet of all of the girls' backstories that we had no other place to do that.

So that was that was very challenging lyrically to write, but also it needed to be a song where, you know, it, it needed to create butterflies and, 'cause that's also a huge part of. The way the song, pop music. Yeah, pop music is, and just that feeling that you get and Rumi's reaching for this dream.

Musically it was really challenging as well. So it was the song that we saw the most demos for. I think we had nine or eight demos and this was the next one or something. And I think lyrically we got there pretty, it didn't take us too long to get there but melodically. It just, it we looked at a lot of different ones, but we didn't pa we didn't approve songs unless both things were working for us.

The lyrics and also the pop element of things. 

Chris: Yeah. So-

Maggie: Unless those two were hitting that bar that we had set, we just sent it back and readjust it. 

Lorien: What's so amazing about that song is that it's a great song, right? But both versions. And it serves so much in terms of character.

Maggie: Yeah. And structurally it's in the right places. And it's revealing and it's that big finale, like it's served. So much. So when you said we had the third act figured out at the beginning, I was like, oh, great. That is not an easy thing to do. So I am relieved that this part was harder to figure out. 'Cause you were in the struggle. Not that the last one was very hard. The third act, figure out first. So jealous. But it's a beautiful thought. Yeah. The finale was hard-

Chris: -in a different way. 

Lorien: Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. 

Chris: I was gonna say too. 'cause there's an interesting, I think one of the really rewarding things about it was that we used to process our executive music producer's name's Ian Eisendrath and he's really great music producer as well as a true student of musical to storytelling.

And so we, the same ruthlessness that Maggie and I would have in writing a scene, which is like. Come in late, have every line matter, move forward. Don't repeat yourself. Find the conflict. All this, give it a shape. We do this exercise with Ian. Same thing in a Google Doc. We would just work through what the song meant, what was really about in this kind of very pedantic way that wasn't poetic.

It wasn't a pop lyric yet. And then at the same time, we would riff about. The song in terms of what it was, what is this song as a more universal feeling? So a song like Take Down, we're like talking about all here are all the toxic things that the girls could believe about the Saja Boys that would also be triggering when it was sung to Rumi and pointed towards her.

Just like a, just an exercise in writing. And then we talk about but this also should be that song of you break up with a boy and he's a total narcissist and a dick, and you can't wait for the rest of the people in your high school to find out what an asshole he is. So we're trying to be very specific and be very, and again, you think about a great.

I remember Driver's License, the Olivia Rodrigo song came out while working on this and I listened to it. I'm like, this is a genius. Like it's so specific to her. You can tell it's full of specific details, but the moment of pathos with the heartbreak and the when am I gonna not feel the shitty it was so universal.

And I think that was the, that was what all that work led to was that this whole Google doc gets broken down into the poetry and the fun of a pop lyric, but people were able to piece it together that everything that we talked about in those writing sessions and in those Google Docs, people inferred it through the light touch of the song lyrics.

And I feel like that's, I think that's what's a little different from these songs than I think typically in a musical you might be a little more. If you want, if your characters want is to open a restaurant, they will sing the lyrics. And I can't wait to open the restaurant. They'll just say it exactly right.

Yeah. What the literal lyric is, and this was more like, we're gonna let you guys fill in some gaps and kind of project into it in a way that I, that's my favorite kind of writing.

Maggie: But I feel like every part of our movie was like that, like the storytelling, but also with the songs, like everything was.

Two layers. There was yeah, front facing, but then there was the subtext that said something totally different, and it was balancing those two constantly and then a scene or a song doing three different things, not just one. So it just, it was just every part of this movie was equally challenging, which is. There was nothing easy about it there. Even the third-

Lorien: -act, I'm sure. I didn't mean to be glib about that. I'm sure it was very complic complicated. 

Maggie: No, but no. We were like, yes, we figured it out. But it was like, okay, how do we earn? 

Lorien: Something you said, Maggie. Chris, you were talking about specificity, which I think is the key yeah, to universal, right? We talk about that a lot when we're writing. But, and you said Maggie, the meeting a character where they are in this moment, in the story that you wanna tell is such a great piece of writing advice. I read a lot of scripts of and it's like even in a pilot, right?

Yeah. It takes the whole pilot to get to the end and then she becomes a pop star. Yes. It's no. I wanna see her as a pop star. Yeah. With all the stuff right now. 'cause when you meet people out in the real world, that world, they are dealing with it all right now. Yeah. You're not witnessing an origin story.

Totally. Yep. And I, it's so good to hear you saying that, especially around. This particular world, which is eye concept and lots of mythology and that, that struggle though, to find that place of how you can do that, introducing that world and those characters and the tone and as a musical, all in the beginning.

Maggie: Yeah, it sounds really fun and easy. That was one of the, like Chris and I are both huge fans with of director Pong Bong, like Pong Gino, and I just did a, I just did a Q and A thing for one of my favorite films, which is the host. And we just, we talked about how usually in a Monster movie there's all this buildup and suspense before you see the monster.

And in this movie it's the second scene of the film, you see this monster like coming towards you and you're like, shit, and running away from it. And it's so you just never really see that. And and it's like you sign up for a monster movie and there it is right away. And the second sequence it's so cool to see.

And that's what we wanted to do is hit it out of the park with like excitement and, it present the characters the way that we, we wanna see them in all their glory and then slowly reveal the cracks within their lives. 

Lorien: It's such a sophisticated, beautiful story, the way it's written and how it's executed that there's reasons why my daughter and all her friends love it.

And then when I watch it too, I'm like, oh, I love this. And it's not that it's on two different levels, like one for her and one for me. It is that. That it's two different levels that appeals to both of us. We're always in between something. Yes. We're always struggling with something. So like I, you work in animation, you get that question, how do you make a movie that appeals to adults and kids? That's four quadrant. And I'm like, I don't think that's what it is. I think it's what you both did beautifully with this movie, which is that it's the same thing for everyone in the audience.

Chris: Yep. 

Lorien: And you're not speaking down to kids, you're saying you guys are emotionally complex in an emotionally complex and sophisticated world like you just made the movie that you loved. 

Maggie: Yeah, and I think we've said this on a few occasions and every time we say it, people are surprised. We didn't set out to make a movie for kids.

Lorien: No. 

Maggie: It wasn't what we wanted to do. We met, we really wanted to make a movie for us, and it's the movie's, a collection of tone and fashion and spectacle and lighting and all the art, artistic stuff about animation that we both love and the things that we wanted to see that we weren't seeing. And, and I think there's animation is there's it there's no there's your bound. It's the possibilities are endless. And you're also just you're able to create anything. And so why not just create whatever you want it to see? And it feels like there's this, I made this move. For me, like I, I made it for my 12-year-old self who was like a huge K-pop fan.

And then the person I'm now, which is, I'm also I'm still a huge K-pop fan, but I've matured and, but I'm still the same person. I'm still that 12-year-old girl that I used to be. And it's for this whole range of me, and I think because this movie was created with that in mind, it's, it is targeting all the all the ages in between the 12 and 40 something year olds-

Lorien: Yes. And my husband, who is not in that range. 

Maggie: Yeah. 

Lorien: I've also caught him singing the songs too. 

Maggie: That's one of my favorite things is like seeing the dads. And Chris describes this really well The like dad fan. 

Lorien: Yes. And I think we need to make a t-shirt that just says couch. And it's only for. Perimenopausal parents, right? Yeah. Because that's all we, that's where we wanna be.

Maggie: The dads. We like watching from the sidelines and being like, what is that? And then starts getting drawn in. Like those things. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Okay.

Lorien: He's oh, you're watching this again. 

Chris: I think it’s also been, yeah, it's been my experience too that, the movies that I've made so far turned out to have you to get on, and I never planned it that way. But I think it, one of the things that kids do is if you make a movie that.

Has some reflection of there's some truth in the movie, and your storytelling is clear. They're on board, like yeah they're with you. And if there's a few topics that just, they were beyond their understanding at a young age, but generally I think it's a, I take it as a compliment to the storytelling that the emotional stakes and the whatever the thing is trying to say about how we are and how we relate to each other is.

Clear enough that they can get invested in it. Which is why I think as I have a lot of friends that are children's book authors, and it's incredibly hard to write a good children's book because it has to be in the same way we were talking about. It has to just do so much at the same time and feel and appear so simple.

And I think that's a, I don't know. It's a deceptively strange balance to find, but I definitely don't think you. Get there by thinking about whether or not this is a thing that a kid would tell you they want, they don't know they're children. They don't know what they want. So I think not looking down at them that way is the only approach.

Lorien: Yeah. It was never a question at Pixar, we were not making a certain, like for movie, for an audience, we were trying to tell a story that the director and the writers wanted to tell. Do you each have a favorite scene? From the movie. 

Chris: Oh, no. 

Lorien: You don't have to tell the other scenes if you pick one. It would just be a secret between us.

Maggie: I have different categories for what I think is Yeah. Like for me visually, and I think also musically is urial is like once we. Because the lighting and just the kind of the spectacle and music video vibe of that, it took a while to get that, to hone that in. And once we did it, it was like a, we were in a review room and I think it was like 200 people on a call and we all cheered because we were so happy with the results and it is just so badass that I was like, I could retire after this. It was That's so cool. Like I, I was, I'm so proud of the song. How hard it goes and the visuals. I just think it was so like, just so ballsy. So just love that, just visually and then, I don't know, I think Couch Couch is really, 

Chris: it's so important.

Maggie: Yeah, it’s an anthem. Yeah, they don't. Yeah. And that was one of those scenes that we wrote really quickly and storyboarded quickly. And it needed to do a bunch of things and needed to be charming as well. And so that's something that I'm really proud of. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. What about you, Chris?

Chris: Funny story about Couch, Couch, Couch. We were, we knew we needed a scene like that and we were riffing about we needed this moment to breathe with the girls, to have a sort of, a little, a moment of buy-in to their relationship that isn't about being pop stars and about go.

Like you needed the rooting interest a little bit was like, these people make each other happy when they're together and you wanted to sell that. And we really were, we searched for so long for a way to crack the stoic burdened main character syndrome with Rumi. Yeah. 'Cause she's obviously really charming and she's like chugging kimbap in the opening scene.

But still, it wasn't completely there. And then at one point we’re at Maggie's but we'd figured out a few that we need to go to the penthouse, we need to have a couple of these exchanges. And then it was like, wait, I have this idea. And she explained it to me and it was so funny. And I was like, dude, go board that right now.

That's it. And then she was like, okay. But then things got so crazy and then we were in editorial later and Maggie's like guys, what about this? And she pitched the scene and everybody loves it again. And I was like, Maggie. You have to go board this before the satisfaction of, 'cause sometimes if you tell somebody your idea before you've done it, it's like really hard to go do it.

So it was like someone cleared Maggie's schedule. She disappeared for a day, came back with all of it boarded and was the, I think the solved there that what came out of her drawings was like the whole way that Rumi shows up from behind the couch, the kind of. We, she's so weird. Yeah. She's such like a goofball in that moment.

And that was all, that was like the thing you needed for the whole movie. You were like, I love this girl and I want her to be able to be that girl some more and she has to do all this shit. She has to go through all this terrible struggle, but it's just so she can get there to sit on the couch with the people she loves.

And I, yeah, I just thought that was a, again, like Maggie said, it's a strange and chaotic epiphany. That's for those. It's such a beautiful film too. 

Lorien: Yeah, it really is. And it does so much and it's wonderful and so well written and executed and that art is beautiful and the character design and animation is gorgeous and has such a strong point of view about the world.

Chris: Thank you so much. Oh, that was super fun. 

Lorien: I know it was, came on the show and talking about your amazing movie. I love it.

Chris: Oh, it's so nice. So nice to talk. Details. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, 

Maggie: It really is. 

Lorien: Yeah. Thank you. I wanna thank Maggie and Chris for coming on the show today to talk about K-Pop demon hunters and the writing of it and the directing of it.

And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.