Entertainment

KPop Demon Hunters Directors Join Animated Short Living With a Visionary

Jonah VillalbaPublished 2m ago2 min readBased on 3 sources
KPop Demon Hunters Directors Join Animated Short Living With a Visionary
Photo by 티비텐 TV10 / CC BY 4.0

Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, the directors of KPop Demon Hunters, have signed on as executive producers of a new animated short, Living With a Visionary, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

An executive producer is usually a senior role. It covers money, oversight and help with finding backers, while others handle the day-to-day work of making the film.

The short was written, directed and animated by Stephen P. Neary, who produced it with Mireia Vilanova. It is 15 minutes long and is narrated by James Cromwell. It adapts a memoir of the same name by John Matthias.

The look of the film is hand-made. Its animation uses pencil and watercolour crayon drawn on vellum, a thin, translucent paper. The production list includes Garden Shed Productions and Cartuna, according to the film's official website.

The short has already collected festival honours. It won the grand jury award for animation at AFI Fest, and the short film jury award for animation at the Sundance Film Festival. Sundance is one of the main showcases for independent film, and its prizes often help a short find buyers.

That buyer search has produced at least one deal. In May 2026, the New York Times Op-Docs acquired the film after its Sundance win, according to a company announcement from The New York Times. Op-Docs is the newspaper's home for short documentaries and other nonfiction films, which it publishes online.

Short films rarely attract a famous name, and the attachment of Kang and Appelhans stands out for that reason. Their feature KPop Demon Hunters became a major hit on streaming, so their involvement gives the short a higher public profile than most animated shorts receive. The producers have not said what role the two will play beyond the executive producer credit.

For animation fans, the project is a reminder of how short films reach audiences. A festival prize can lead to a streaming or publishing deal, and a well-known name on the credits can draw more eyes to the work.

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