‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Is Your Best Animated Feature Oscar Winner

All awards season, one animated film ruled them all. Others have come. Others have tried. But, in the end, KPop Demon Hunters was always going to rule supreme. And it completed that run Sunday night with the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Netflix’s most popular movie of all time beat a stellar list of competition to take the award, including Disney’s Zootopia 2, Pixar’s Elio, Neon’s Arco, and France’s Little Amélie or the Character of Rain. All of which are fantastic, but there was no stopping the cultural juggernaut that was KPop Demon Hunters. Especially since it had already won the equivalent award at the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Annie Awards, and more. According to Wikipedia, the film won 130 of its 187 nominations across all award bodies even before Sunday’s Oscars.

Some of that also included the song “Golden,” which itself was a huge hit and, as expected, also won an Oscar on Sunday for Best Original Song. The moment came a little later in the ceremony after a killer live performance that brought the house down.

Few films, animated or not, have had the kind of year KPop Demon Hunters had. After a rather quiet debut on Netflix, the film slowly but steadily built up its audience, culminating in it taking over the top spot as the streamer’s most popular movie ever. In fact, now, months later, it is still regularly one of the top 10 most-streamed films on the site. It also enjoyed a very, very successful run in theaters, where it was the number one movie in the country at the box office, despite also being available on Netflix. Then, of course, there was all the merch, all the accolades, and now, all the talk about the franchise continuing. Which it will.

But the Oscars are the place legacies are solidified, and that’s certainly what just happened for KPop Demon Hunters.

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