Netflix's Top Kids Movies: KPop Demon Hunters & Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Dominate

KPop Demon Hunters and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse have achieved huge success on Netflix, and this speaks volumes about not just the streaming platform, but Hollywood as a whole. Released in June 2025, KPop Demon Hunters became Netflix's most-watched original movie ever, earning over 500 million views and releasing a smash-hit, Billboard record-breaking soundtrack.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a much older movie, released all the way back in 2018. Similar to KPop Demon Hunters, Into the Spider-Verse became an instant success, taking over the pop culture conversation, earning over $394 million at the worldwide box office, and even winning Best Animated Feature at the 91st Academy Awards. But despite releasing seven years apart, KPop Demon Hunters and Into the Spider-Verse share something major in common — and the entertainment industry ought to take note.

KPop Demon Hunters & Into The Spider-Verse Are Netflix's Top 2 Kids Movies

As of this writing, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters are currently No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, on Netflix's Top 10 Kids Movies list in the U.S. (via Flix Patrol). This is no small feat considering that Into the Spider-Verse is an eight-year-old movie, edging out more recent popular competition like The Bad Guys and PAW Patrol: The Movie, which also landed in the top 5.

As for KPop Demon Hunters, the Netflix movie has spent 193 days on the list, which is essentially almost every day since it released on June 20, 2025. But perhaps even more impressively, both Into the Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters have also made Netflix's general Top 10 movies list, landing at a respective No. 7 and No. 8.

Considering that all of the top six movies on the list, which include Netflix true crime doc Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story, Priscilla, and the first two Pitch Perfect movies, all arrived on the platform just over a week ago, this speaks volumes about Into the Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters' Hollywood influence.

Sony Animation Is Changing The Game For Animated Movies

In addition to simply being great movies, both KPop Demon Hunters and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse are both made by Sony Animation, who is definitely giving Disney and Pixar a run for their money in terms of influential animated cinema. Disney/Pixar have maintained a traditional 3D animation formula and polish that, while consistently high-quality, hasn't evolved much over the years.

In contrast, Sony Animation has taken big swings and tailored their animation styles to fit each individual movie. KPop Demon Hunters' animation was inspired by an array of influences, including anime, K-dramas, and music videos, which perfectly suited the pop group-centric storyline.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a superhero story, and thus, its look is remarkably different, as it's a hybrid of 3D and 2D animation, which comes together to create the look of a moving comic book. This bold approach has more than paid off for Sony Animation, and KPop Demon Hunters and the Spider-Verse franchise are two of the most talked-about animation properties in the pop culture conversation, with excitement building for the third Spider-Verse movie, 2027's Beyond the Spider-Verse, and many clamoring for a KPop Demon Hunters 2.

Disney And Pixar Should Take Bigger Swings Like Sony

If the success of 2025's Zootopia 2 — it has currently earned over $1.5 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing movie ever for Walt Disney Animation Studios — Disney and Pixar are doing just fine from a financial standpoint. However, there's no question that animated Disney films have been slowly ceding cultural relevance to Sony Animation for some time.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the first movie to mark this shift, as it was the first movie to break Disney's seven-year Oscar streak of winning Best Animated Feature. Though the studio has continued to amass several wins in that category since Into the Spider-Verse, its last one was all the way back in 2021 for Soul.

Disney's 2020s Oscars losing streak looks to continue, as KPop Demon Hunters is already the projected Best Animated Feature winner for the upcoming 2026 Oscars. Of course, awards are hardly the only metric of success, as Disney and Pixar's coffers will attest, but the fact is that people just aren't talking about Disney/Pixar movies the way they used to.

While Frozen, Inside Out, and Encanto were pop culture tentpoles, more recent offerings like Lightyear, Strange World, Wish, Elio, and Elemental have been largely forgotten about. This is a stark difference from KPop Demon Hunters and the Spider-Verse franchise, as evidenced by their Netflix success, which suggests that it might be time for Disney to venture out from the tried (or tired) and true if they want to stay relevant.