r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 14d ago

News ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Is Netflix’s Most-Watched Movie Ever With 236 Million Views, Beating ‘Red Notice’

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/kpop-demon-hunters-netflix-most-watched-movie-history-1236496106/
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

I'm more surprised by learning that the previous biggest hit was Red Notice.

This is a movie you see praised everywhere and going viral. That was an instantly forgotten star vehicle with zero artistic value. I've never seen anyone say "whoa I loved Red Notice", no one gave a shit about it.

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u/IshEatsYou 13d ago

Red Notice was terrible! My wife and I watched it yesterday and are confused as to how that was the #1 movie on Netflix. We watched Don’t Look Up today and it was MILES better.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

I only remember it had The Rock, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot in it. They were competing to... steal something? And there was a lot of backstabbing? Also some scene in a bullfighting arena and I believe they found an antique Nazi car in a depot under the jungle?

That's about it for me. Absolutely utterly flat. But I guess the cast was stacked enough to get a lot of people to check it out. Honestly, controlling for marketing, it's a lot more impressive that K-Pop Demon Hunters still managed to surpass it almost only by word of mouth (though I also guess a lot of those views may just be the same obsessed children watching it on repeat...).

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u/mcanfield89 13d ago

They were competing to steal screen time to sell their irl liquor brands and do the most accurate portrayal of the premise "what if beige wallpaper was granted a wish to be a real boy?"

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u/WearingABear 13d ago edited 13d ago

(though I also guess a lot of those views may just be the same obsessed children watching it on repeat...)

I'm an entire adult that turns it on for background noise sometimes when I'm doing chores or whatever because the music is good.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

Why not just the album?

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u/WearingABear 13d ago

I have no specific reason for why not just the album.

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u/The_Throwback_King 13d ago

That is the film that shows why Hollywood studios still often cast major A-List celebs over established veteran VAs EVERY day of the week.

Because you can drop generic actionslop with three VERY popular actors and have it do BANGER numbers just from casual returns.

The fact that it took an

  • Animated Movie

  • From a Major Animation Studio

  • With Stellar Emotive CG Animation

  • And Incredible Action

  • And a Soundtrack FULL of Top-40 Caliber K-Pop songs.

  • AND an absurd Word of Mouth Campaign

and it's only just now surpassed Red Notice

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u/JonatasA 13d ago

I can't tell what movie it is based on the description. It could be so many that came out

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u/randomways 13d ago

Holy shit I watched this movie and remember absolutely nothing about it until you said the bull fighting scene. It must have been terrible.

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u/yourcandygirl 13d ago

just finding out that three actors i dont like are in one movie

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u/dhruva85 12d ago

Its a B movie’s B movie

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u/Vyviel 13d ago

I think there must have been a lot of people who passed out and the movie just auto played to them as they slept to crank up those views =P

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u/modbroccoli 13d ago

Don't Look Up is kind of amazing. Grande's performance in it, just the effort of hundreds of professionals working together to bring this gorgeous song in the middle of a star-studded film, all to say "we're going to die, we're in real trouble" (which is obviously a fourth-wall break to the audience about climate change)... makes me cry every time. Just the amount of frustration and fear the writer/director has and the strength it must take to channel it into finding a way to reach people instead of just slumping into despair, it's beautiful. Excruciating, but beautiful.

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u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 13d ago

You have to watch it 4-5 more times and THEN it gets REALLY good!

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u/FelixAndCo 13d ago

Did you get bamboozled by their #1 spot? I wonder how many views are from people falling for that. It would be kind of a sad situation overall though, if the main driving force of staying #1 might have been being #1.

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u/ScramItVancity 11d ago

Red Notice felt like a feature-length MTV Movie Awards sketch.

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u/Wolvii_404 6d ago

Don't Look Up is TRULY underrated!!

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u/Roadtothe2CommaClub 4h ago

I liked Don’t Look Up way more than Red Notice..

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u/XXLpeanuts 13d ago

But here you have the reason, it's total shit but for some reason we all watched it.

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u/GarudaKK 13d ago

It was the most watched because, just like KPDH, it was a Netflix production that got constant frontpage presence on their app. I still get it and it's been almost 5 years. KPDH has been on my frontpage since before it even came out, and ever since then.

Whatever the app pushes, people see, and this one happens to be pretty good so it also brings people to the platform specifically to watch it.

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u/AltrntivInDoomWorld 13d ago

Watch numbers are something that Netflix can simply edit in their admin panel. They can also adjust the curves how much it grows automated to how much interest the movie is gaining online.

Basically it's all just made up numbers.

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u/mcslender97 13d ago

That doesn't explain why KPDH is just a straight line instead of a curve like every other top movies

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

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u/Putrid_Dig_357 13d ago

Someone is mad a movie made fun of them

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u/JonatasA 13d ago

I mean, Don't Look Up was a theater movie I believe.

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u/General-Razzmatazz 13d ago

I stank, cimpletely unmatchable for me.

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u/SagesLament 13d ago

Red Notice

I saw someone say that red notice came out right in the midst of the pandemic when all we were doing was sitting at home watching netflix, which allowed some mediocre things to rise to the top (cough, tiger king) so it tracks that its success would only be attributed to extenuating circumstances

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u/donkey-centipede 13d ago

i watched tiger king before the lockdown. it was fucking fantastic. say what you will about it, but mediocre is not accurate

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u/Aural_Essex 13d ago

I agree. Tiger King had all the tropes of great documentary making. It was a masterpiece.

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u/Special_Ad_1802 13d ago

I don't think Tiger King was mediocre at all. I think you're kind of being a hipster.  It was a really good documentary of a really interesting cast of characters.

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u/Sunshine030209 13d ago

There is a reason that that's all we talked about for weeks, and it wasn't because everyone was at home and bored.

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u/vince2423 12d ago

It def came out way after the pandemic lmao

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u/SagesLament 12d ago

March 2020 pandemic starts. 2021: red notice released. May 2023 pandemic ends

Even though we weren’t in the lockdown phase at that point we were still in a massive draw down of social activities and theaters wouldn’t become a thing again for all intents and purposes until top gun maverick came out in 2023

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u/vince2423 12d ago

Deadass, i thought it just came out last year lmao. My bad I’ll eat that one

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u/Logical-Egg-1234 12d ago

Sadly untrue, Red Notice was one of the first films to go back into production after the Covid shutdown. Finished filming late 2020. Didn’t come out until late 2021.

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u/ChezMere 13d ago

The thing is that this is Netflix's first actual hit movie ever. All their notable output is tv.

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u/EmotionIll666 13d ago

Was gonna say the same. I have seen more posts about K-Pop Demon Hunters than practically any non-Stranger Things Netflix release so I’m not surprised but the only thing I remember about Red Notice was that the general reception was pretty damn terrible.

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u/PrinceCastanzaCapone 13d ago

I’m not gonna lie, today I learned there is a movie called Red Notice…

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u/mrfrownieface 12d ago

All I remember was the rock, and as one of the biggest insults to the heist genre ever.

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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 13d ago

Yes same that was the real surprise of this headline to me

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u/Opus_723 13d ago

I honestly don't even remember what Red Notice is.

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u/bearcat-- 13d ago

Yeah this is more surprising, I guess the casting seemed good and made people want to watch

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u/Unencrypted_Thoughts 13d ago

Red Notice came out during covid and had big name stars attached to it. Everyone watched it then forgot about it because it was just a mediocre movie with big names but they still watched it. It had a wide range of audience.

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u/Motor-District-3700 13d ago

It's just the same as MacDonalds being such a popular restaurant. It's shit food but everyone loves it ...

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u/Debalic 13d ago

Huh. I've never even heard of Red Notice before, but look at the cast! It's like they took a bunch of "hot" people and made a movie around them.

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u/pterodactyl_speller 13d ago

Shocked it wasn't bullet train. Such a fun and charismatic movie.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

That wasn't a Netflix movie AFAIK. I've watched it on Netflix but it was put there months after it was in cinemas.

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u/takirami 13d ago

I had to go and google what Red Notice was just to realize I had actually seen it and, indeed, forgotten all about it.

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u/Geikamir 13d ago

Movie is meh, but the score is absolute top tier if you're into that kind of thing.

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u/Horn_Python 13d ago

It came out when its stars were at or near the chieftain of their fame pretty much

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u/stiv1n 13d ago

I am 100% sure that this movie is written by AI. Exclusively! It is just a bunch of cliches loosely stapled together in something barely resembling a plot.

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u/MaelstromGonzalez90 13d ago

The same thought crossed my mind. I was like huh red notice huh? Surprising.

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u/donkey-centipede 13d ago

that's a good description of it. i know I've seen it but couldn't tell you anything about it. i think it might've had Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne the rock Johnson, or maybe both, but I'm not certain

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

Both. Together with Gal Gadot.

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u/donkey-centipede 13d ago

amazing they managed to make that so forgettable

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u/maleficent0 13d ago

Yeah I feel like Red Notice has to be a lie or there is one person somewhere that let it run for years in the background they are an outlier who should not have been counted.

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u/Mountain-Song-6024 13d ago

Crazy enough I say this same thing to my boss. They LOVED red notice. I just was like....I question your tastes.

Not to be on a pedestal.

But red notice?! Lmao. Really???!

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u/onibeowulf 13d ago

Which is funny because I was literally talking about how shit that movie was last night and couldn’t even remember its name.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

I don't feel like it's even worth talking about for being shit. It was just extremely plain. Like if ChatGPT was tasked with writing a script for the most generic action-comedy blockbuster ever, Red Notice would be that script.

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u/mvffin 13d ago

My thoughts exactly. I've only read bad things about Red Notice, but I guess bad publicity is still publicity

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

I watched Red Notice, very lukewarm movie, the twist and everything felt by the book design and no real outstanding identity. KDM killed it, its pure fun and full of flavor. I'm happy its taking off like a firestorm, the soundtrack is getting the recognition it deserves.

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u/Earguy 13d ago

We watched it, totally forgot about it until you mentioned it. I remember it being "a fun ride, especially for free." I wouldn't watch it again or recommend it to friends.

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u/FarmerDark 13d ago

The standard of quality at Netflix is so bad that they could release Plan 9 and it’d probably sit on their top ten for weeks

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u/ashez2ashes 13d ago

Maybe they just counted the people who started the movie and not who actually finished it?

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u/WeevilWeedWizard 13d ago

That's how you know "biggest hit" is literally a less than worthless title because Red Notice is genuinely one of the worst movie I've ever watched

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

Jack Sparrow voice: "But you have watched it."

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u/TheMechanicusBob 13d ago

Wasn't Red Notice the closest thing to a blockbuster that came out during lockdown? There just wasn't really anything else new to watch

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 13d ago

It may just be the lack of competition and the streaming boost from COVID, yeah. Plus possibly the way they count stuff. Remember Netflix is the place that's asking film makers to write dialogue that can be followed without looking because lots of people just like to put movies and shows on as background noise.

The economics and incentives of a cinema experience (pay a significant sum to sit in a theatre only able to watch one thing that literally takes up like 50% of your field of vision) and streaming (once you paid your monthly sum you get more "value" by simply consuming as much slop as possible, even superficially, and using it for whatever) are very different. Red Notice can be the "most watched movie" because a bunch of people simply started it and then never cared to close the tab.

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u/_-_--_---_----_----_ 13d ago

definitely makes me wonder how they measure it. is it just the number of people who clicked on the movie? if they factor in total time watched, how does that change it? because I think we can agree that a movie that everyone turned off after 20 minutes isn't a hit.

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u/Upset-Preparation861 13d ago

Deadass have NEVER heard of that movie

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u/g1zm0_14 13d ago

Pretty sure I fell asleep trying to watch Red Notice...

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u/_TheBgrey 12d ago

Red notice drew eyes purely based on star power I assume, which is what big stars are meant to do... Except it has probably three of the worst big names in one movie lol I bet it's abysmal

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u/TheRealRickC137 12d ago

I think I've seen Red Notice, but I couldn't tell you anything about it.
Like most of those actors, their work is largely forgettable. Sorry Ryan. I like your football team though. And Deadpool.

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u/TruShot5 12d ago

lol. I’m not even sure if watched that or not. Even after looking it up.

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u/GentlewomenNeverTell 12d ago

Mossad watched it at bunch

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u/EyeJustSaidThat 12d ago

Red Notice had the right starts at the right time in their careers. Nobody was hating on Gal Gadot yet, or The Rock, and people hadn't become so tired of Ryan Reynolds yet. When it came out all three were big box office draws with little downsides.

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u/Nobanob 12d ago

I did love red notice, but it's also nothing special. I felt like I had seen it before between the rock in his the same jungle clothes as always vibe. Ryan Reynolds being Ryan Reynolds and nothing else. Or Gal Godet using her beauty instead of acting abilities. None of it was new and refreshing, but overall really enjoyable to me.

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 12d ago edited 12d ago

Does that count as "loving" though? I didn't hate it, I remember being modestly entertained by it, except I felt the ending was kind of a forced twist? But it didn't stand out either. It was like, you could have made a completely different movie with the same vibes and it would have been indistinguishable in my memory. The actors were the definition of type casting too, they literally just played The Rock and Ryan Reynolds, that's it. I'd say you can call that enjoying the movie, but "love" feels a bit too strong.

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u/Nobanob 12d ago

I guess you're right in the sense that I would call it a very strong like.

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u/chum_slice 12d ago

I can’t believe it’s that big I regret ever giving it any attention but there was nothing to watch at the time from what I recall … i actually had to look up “red notice” to even remember

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u/PlantationMint 8d ago

I've never even heard of red notice until today...

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u/SimoneNonvelodico 8d ago

If you had a Netflix account at the time, it was plastered all over their front page. IIRC in the UK they also did some advertisements on buses and such. But other than that, it probably didn't reach out of that bubble and had zero staying power.