The trailer for Anderson .Paak’s K-pop-centric film, K-Pops!, has dropped, showing the Grammy Award-winning singer diving headfirst into the world of Korean music competition shows.
K-Pops!, directed, co-written and produced by .Paak, premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and was acquired by Aura Entertainment over the summer following its U.S. premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.The Stampede Ventures and Live Nation Productions-produced movie stars .Paak, Jonnie “Dumbfoundead” Park, Yvette Nicole Brown and .Paak’s real-life teen son, Soul Rasheed.
The film follows musician BJ (.Paak) and his quest for stardom. “On his journey to revive his music career, BJ lands a gig with a house band in Seoul for a K-pop competition show,” the film’s synopsis reads. “While working on the show, he discovers his long lost son, Tae Young (Rasheed) is also chasing stardom.”
The trailer finds .Paak in Korea working Korean music competition series, Wildcard. “What do you know about K-pop?” Rasheed’s character Tae Young asks .Paak’s BJ. “Not a damn thing,” .Paak’s character responds. BJ sees himself in Tae Young, only to meet his mother and realize he’s his father.
The ‘K-Pops!’ poster
Aura Entertainment
Ahead of its 2024 Toronto Film Festival premiere, .Paak told The Hollywood Reporter that the idea for the film came during the COVID-19 lockdown, when his son declared he wanted to be a YouTuber. The Grammy Award-winning performer said he and his son starting messing around with skits when getting started and .Paak realized his son was gifted as an improviser. “I started getting super into it. I was filming all of them and I was staying up super late to edit the videos so we could post them,” he explained.
“Around this time, my whole house was obsessed with K-pop. His mom is full Korean and I’m part Korean, too, but I didn’t know anything about my Korean heritage. I’m always pushing for him to learn about his Black side. I’m like, ‘You know about BTS. What about BET?’” he added. “I thought this could be a funny story: What if I wasn’t involved in my son’s life, he was raised in Korea, and I found out about him later and we have to learn about each other’s cultures.”
K-Pops! was co-written by .Paak and Khaila Amazan and will be released exclusively in AMC theaters on Feb. 27. Well-known K-pop producer Dem Jointz worked with .Paak to create original music for the project.
The film was produced by Greg Silverman and Jon Berg of Stampede Ventures, Jaeson Ma of EST Studios, .Paak and Park. It’s executive producers include Chris Bosco, Michael Tadross, Gideon Yu and Grant Torre for Stampede Ventures; Michael Rapino and Ryan Kroft of Live Nation Productions; Eric Tu of EST Studios; Jeffrey Azoff and Anna Savage of Full Stop Management; and Khaila Amazan and Kevin Nishimura.