In a quiet stretch of Sony Pictures Animation’s offices on the Miracle Mile are two unassuming cubicles. There are hardly any personal effects of any kind, save for a bathrobe draped over one of the chairs.
It’s not the trappings you’d expect for the influential executives behind KPop Demon Hunters, the biggest movie in Netflix history, or the Oscar-winning Spider-Verse franchise, which pushed the entire animation industry into radical new territory. Yet this is where SPA presidents Kristine Belson and Damien de Froberville can be found most days as they lead the 600-person division that is in the awards race in a big way thanks to Demon Hunters.
On Feb. 13 arrives the duo’s next big bet, GOAT, an $80 million theatrical basketball-themed project produced by NBA superstar Steph Curry and voice starring Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin as a young goat who wants to be the first small animal to play Roarball, this world’s version of professional basketball. Like on all their films, the duo work closely with sister division ImageWorks, known for its groundbreaking animation work.
Belson revitalized the then-languishing SPA when she joined as president in 2015 from DreamWorks, and recruited de Froberville to join the studio in 2023, elevating him to join her in the president role last year.
In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, they argue that KPop Demon Hunters needed to go to Netflix, indicate that a sequel won’t be ready for 2029 and are prepping their next blockbuster hopeful, Beyond the Spider-Verse.
Damien de Froberville and Kristine Belson
Photographed by Shelby Moore
Can you tell me about your division of labor?
KRISTINE BELSON Damien is very production and operation-savvy. And theoretically, I oversee the creative side of things, but Damien’s also quite creative. He gave a huge note on GOAT in the last week that was massively instrumental to the movie.
And what was that note?
BELSON There were two scenes in Act One that we lifted out.
DAMIEN DE FROBERVILLE The movie felt really dense in the first 45 minutes. I was trying to see where I could cut. And we landed on about six minutes.
BELSON We pitched it to the filmmakers. It felt a little bit of a crazy thing to do with so little time to go. And they were like, “Really?” And then within hours they came back and said, “We want to do this.”
Will (Caleb McLaughlin) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Picture Animation’s GOAT.
Sony Pictures
Rivals are jealous of how radical your work is. How far are you willing to go?
BELSON If I’m not scared by some of the decisions that we’re making, then we’re not making the right decisions.
DE FROBERVILLE The audience for animation is changing. Would Ice Age and Shrek, if they were starting today, would they work? Or are we pushing animation more towards KPop?
How do you pick streaming versus theatrical? Is that Tom Rothman?
BELSON We go talk to not just Tom but also the heads of marketing about the theatrical viability. And if it’s determined that it’s not theatrically viable, then we’ll pivot to streaming.
How much have you gamed out what if KPop had gone theatrical before Netflix?
BELSON One million percent, it had to be on Netflix. It was the perfect storm of that movie coming together with the power of that platform. You have these check-ins: three days, 10 days, 28 days.
DE FROBERVILLE The three-day call was like, “Yeah, it’s OK.” The 10-day call: “Yeah, it’s OK. It’s starting to look interesting, especially on the rewatch.”
BELSON And then normally you wouldn’t have heard from them again between the 10-day and the 28-day. But then we got a call from Hannah Minghella on day 14 or something. “Something is going on here.” So, it needed time, which you do not get theatrically.
KPop Demon Hunters
Netflix
Reports of a sequel being ready for 2029 seem far-fetched, given how long these movies take.
BELSON (She places her pointer finger to her nose, to indicate that’s correct thinking.)
Where are we with the sequel? Is it directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans in a room?
BELSON There’s been a lot to tend to in terms of the award campaign. After all the noise and awards and big parties with big people — yes. It’ll be back to the two of them in a room.
The first Spider-Verse seemed impossible to top, and yet you did. How do you top Demon Hunters?
DE FROBERVILLE On Spider-Verse, I was like, “How are they going to top [2023’s] Across the Spider- Verse? And then we’re looking at art and design [for 2027’s Beyond the Spider-Verse], and
it’s really blowing my mind. We look at a lot of art, but what we saw at the last presentation, I’m like, “Wow.”
BELSON I keep thinking about it too.
DE FROBERVILLE KPop will be the same thing. It’s just like Spider-Verse. The world is so rich — the world of the demons and the pop star [element], what happened to Jinu. There’s so much we could expand into.
Streaming movies are not widely known for their superior quality. Maybe because without box office, there isn’t the incentive to push the creative too hard. Ignorant question: but why make Kpop so good, when many people feel they don’t have to on streaming?
BELSON I don’t think we have the discipline to care less about one movie than another.
DE FROBERVILLE And even the series we’re doing for Netflix now, right. You’re supposed to be way more disciplined in series that you would be in features.
What do you mean by disciplined?
BELSON In other words, discipline to say “Let it go.” The schedule is so fast [on TV.]
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Sony Pictures Releasing/Marvel Entertainment/Courtesy Everett Collection
Spider-Verse godfathers Phil Lord and Chris Miller have been directing MGM’s Project Hail Mary for two years. Have they been a presence?
DE FROBERVILLE They’ve been present. Sending notes. They set up their Hail Mary edits right in the courtyard here. Just to be close to Spider-Verse.
They drove some animators crazy on the last Spider-Verse because they write the movie until the end of production. Is that straining for people this time around?
BELSON Nobody has to work on a show they don’t want to work on. Even though you’ll hear — whether it’s Spider-Verse or other shows — that people go through these really difficult crunch times, everybody wants to be on the most ambitious and most exciting shows.
DE FROBERVILLE We made some changes to the pipeline to, not avoid — because Chris and Phil are always going to iterate late — but to lessen the amount of iteration on the back end. We brought on a live-action DP, Alice Brooks. She’s been directing camera in a way that we hadn’t done on Spider-Verse before. We’re in animation on Spider-Verse now. Because the directors and Chris and Phil have a chance to iterate so much early on while we’re in story, and truly visualize what it’s going look like by the time those sequences flow into the Imageworks pipeline, there’s way less changes.
Do we have writers yet on the Spider-Punk or Spider-Gwen spinoffs?
BELSON I’m not allowed to say. But we are active on both.
How many projects do you develop compared to how many you make? Like a live-action studio, I’d imagine you are developing a lot of things and just see what rises to the top?
BELSON In live-action, the ratio of development to production — it’s a much bigger difference. In animation, we’re so concept-oriented that once we’ve agreed with Tom Rothman and the marketing people, “this is a good idea for a movie,” it’s just a matter of time until we get it there. I would love to have a one-to-one ratio. It doesn’t work that way. We’re always trying to hit that.
You say Genndy Tartakovsky built the studio with Hotel Transylvania. Is he doing your mysterious Buds movie?
BELSON He’s not doing Buds. We really want to be making another movie with Genndy.
Is he active on the Hotel Transylvania TV spinoff?
He took a look at a couple things. But he hasn’t been very involved. (She adopts a playful, wink-wink tone of voice.) But say if we were making a fifth Hotel Transylvania movie, then those people who theoretically were making that movie could go hang out with the people making the series and check in with each other.
Are you integrating AI into your workflow?
DE FROBERVILLE AI is a suite of tools that we at some point will explore and probably leverage. It seems [today], gen AI is not directable enough for what we do.
This story appeared in the Feb. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.