KPOPS! the directorial debut of musician Anderson .Paak, which he stars in with his son, is finally being released.
The film debuted back at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
It also stars Jee Young Han, Jon “Dumbfoundead” Park, Yvette Nicole Brown, Cathy Shim, Kevin Woo and Soul Rasheed.
Here’s the description:
Meet BJ (Anderson .Paak), a fish-out-of-water musician on the search for stardom carrying a bruised heart from a complicated past relationship. On his journey to revive his music career, BJ lands a gig with a house band in Seoul for a K-Pop competition show. While working on the show, he discovers his long lost son, Tae Young (Soul Rasheed) is also chasing stardom. What follows is a story of uniting people and cultures through music and comedy, rebuilding relationships and learning how to trust people as they evolve.
What’s the inspiration behind the film ?
As we previously reported, at the film’s TIFF premiere, .Paak told the crowd that the idea for the film came from his son wanting to start a YouTube channel, which they created during the pandemic, and this influenced him to want to write a script and movie.
“I was really amped up on the film and started again with my YouTube skits, and I was having a lot of fun with the idea, but I had no clue how much work it would be,” he said. “And it was seriously the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And even before we started shooting I didn’t think I could pull it off, and honestly I tried to quit several times. The strike happened, and I was like, ‘OK, this is my out,’ and I saw how sad everybody was that we’d gotten so far, and I was really about to just give up, and there was several people that really drove things home for me. And I remember asking, ‘Well, do you guys still want to do this? This is so hard.’ And he [Soul] is like, ‘What? I better do it. I’ve been in acting classes for months, and I’ve been in these choreo classes.’ And then I was like, ‘You know what? We got to do this. This is a unique story that needs to be told.”
When will ‘K-POPS!’ be in theaters?
The film will be released exclusively in AMC Theaters on Feb. 27 via Aura Entertainment. Watch the trailer below: