How Did Republic Manage to Snatch the Hottest K-Pop Soundtrack—Is Witchcraft or Just Genius at Play?
Added on August 8, 2025 inMusic News Cards
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Did you know Mercury is retrograde this week—which astrologers say is a cosmic invitation for miscommunication, wild plot twists, and, yes, absolute chart mayhem? It’s as if the universe binge-watched a double feature of Encanto and Frozen, then decided to send a pair of K-pop demon-slaying sisters straight onto our screens… just to shake things up. Honestly, could there be a better astrological setup for Sony Pictures Animation’s “KPop Demon Hunters” to explode into Netflix’s biggest animated original of all time? I keep checking the charts like I’m expecting the planets to rearrange themselves—because that’s the kind of seismic, out-of-nowhere magic we’re seeing on both Spotify and Billboard this summer.
While you may be clutching your crystals or just clutching your phone, either way, prepare yourself: the K-pop revolution isn’t slowing down—if anything, it’s moonwalking past the old guard with the cheeky confidence of a Leo sun at karaoke night. How did this all happen? Is this the new “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” for the TikTok generation? Or did Neptune simply get bored and beam Twice’s dance moves into our collective consciousness? The answers are almost as wild as the soundtrack’s ascent. There’s pop, power, and possibly a pinch of planetary mischief behind the scenes . LEARN MORE
It’s difficult to overstate how big a summer Sony Pictures Animation’s KPop Demon Hunters is having. Netflix now has its biggest animated original film of all time, and with it, Universal Music Group’s Republic Records and its now red-hot new record label partner Visva have what could go down as the biggest soundtrack of 2025.
Both the movie and its songs are on the cusp of a moment not seen since 2022, when Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” took over the world and became Disney’s highest-charting song of all time. And as “Golden,” Demon Hunters’ biggest hit thus far, has reached a new high at Number 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 this week, it’s a moment that could be about to materialize.
“I still have to keep pinching myself every morning when I wake up and look at the charts, we’re a month in and this just isn’t slowing down,” says Republic Records chairman and CEO Jim Roppo.
The “Bruno” comparison is one Roppo has thought of frequently over the past few weeks, also harkening back to other major family-friendly film music moments like The Greatest Showman in 2017 and Frozen in 2013. But in Demon Hunters’ case, it isn’t just a song or two, but a whole collection of hits. By Aug. 4, the soundtrack had six of the top 10 slots on Spotify’s U.S. chart and four of the top 10 on the global chart.
It’s a major win for Republic and Visva, which have won the envy of the music business with one of the biggest records of 2025 in a stagnant chart year where new music is struggling to dethrone last year’s hits. And while the film and the music are now undeniable, it wasn’t a moment Republic may have been expecting even a few weeks ago.
“I think we all had pretty modest expectations, I’m not going to lie, you don’t know when these things break,” Roppo says. “But as the music business and the movie business shows you time and time again, the universe speaks sometimes, and you just have to listen with your eyes and your ears and then move quickly and say lots of thank yous.”
Republic got involved with the soundtrack last year, thanks to a partnership with JYP for K-pop phenoms Twice, and because of Republic’s relationship with songwriter-producer Savan Kotecha.
Sony Pictures Music Group President Spring Aspers, who worked on other major musical moments like the Spiderverse films, had spent five years working on the film’s music, tapping Teddy Parks’ The Black Label, sister company Sony Music Publishing and the movie’s executive music producer Ian Eisendrath among others to help with securing the talent to write and record the songs.
Aspers didn’t give specifics when asked about other potential labels that may have been considered for the soundtrack, only stating that “for a lot of people not just on the music side but in movies too, this movie seemed a little out of left field, maybe a bit niche.”
Last fall, she’d connected with Kotecha, who she’s previously worked with at Sony Pictures Animation, knowing that he was focusing on international music at his new record label Visva. At the time, Visva was closing on a deal for a joint venture with Republic (the paperwork was officially signed in the beginning of the year) and Aspers was looking for a K-pop act for a song for the end of the film. Twice expressed interest, making for a natural team.
“When Twice raised their hands, it was like, game over,” Aspers says. “You just can’t get a bigger superstar act in a lot of ways. They’re [with] Imperial, it just made a lot of sense.”
As Kotecha says: “My deal was with Republic, and I thought Twice would be perfect. I thought I’d get the support quickly since [Republic] were my partners. They were the first people we asked, and they got it right away.”
As Demon Hunters’ global dominance continues, the songs are flirting with top spots in the U.S. too. For this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart, the soundtrack came in second, still about 50,000 units shy of dethroning Morgan Wallen’s chart monster I’m The Problem. But on the Hot 100, “Golden” hit a new high in second-place, just trailing Alex Warren’s “Ordinary.” “Golden” outstreamed “Ordinary” by nearly 10 million streams, per Luminate data, with “Ordinary” holding on thanks to about 68 million more radio audience impressions.
Roppo says U.S. radio’s got a “limited” history with K-pop but adds they’ve gone “very aggressively” at Top 40 stations as they try to lock up a coveted number one.
“We’re the smallest percentage away, we’re focused on increasing rotations, adding more stations, and that’s global too,” Roppo says. “There’s a tremendous amount of upside there.”
As Demon Hunters continues to surge, the team hopes to make more moments beyond the screen too. Kotecha, Roppo and Aspers say Republic, Visva, Sony and Netflix are having active discussions “to figure out what a live music moment looks like, what pop up moments could look like,” though he wouldn’t give details on what that would be.
Twice, for their part, debuted Demon Hunters track “Takedown” at Lollapalooza over the weekend. There’s plenty of potential options for live material, whether that’s more typical live performances from the artists behind the songs, or more involved multimedia involving the film’s IP.
“I can’t say anything yet because it’s so early,” Kotecha says, “But we’re spitballing ideas, everything’s on the table.”
This story appeared in the Aug. 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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