These Documentary Filmmakers Set Out to Make an Honest Film About BTS—and Got More Than They’d Hoped For
In one of the most highly anticipated comebacks in recent memory, global superstar group BTS has surged back into the spotlight after a nearly four-year hiatus. The K-pop boy band’s long-awaited return, following its members’ military service, has dominated news headlines—while its fans, known as ARMY, have once again set social media ablaze. The septet’s latest album, Arirang, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with lead single “Swim” topping the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release.
Jimin, RM, and V.Courtesy of Netflix.
But BTS’s return to the pinnacle of pop wasn’t easy, as revealed in the new documentary BTS: The Return. Directed by Bao Nguyen (Be Water, The Greatest Night in Pop) and produced by This Machine, Hybe, and East Films, the 93-minute film follows members RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook as they gather in a Los Angeles studio to work on their comeback album, Arirang. The result is a raw, intimate portrait of their creative process—and the doubts and pressures that come with global fame as they attempt to define the next chapter of their career.
Vanity Fair spoke with Nguyen and producer Jane Cha Cutler about the making of the movie and the close collaboration with BTS and Hybe, the group’s parent company, that brought it to life.
Vanity Fair: Can you tell me a bit about how this documentary came about? Why did you decide to make a documentary about BTS?
Bao Nguyen: I went to go see BTS at one of their SoFi [Stadium] shows. I love live music, but that was the loudest concert I’ve ever been to, and just feeling the energy of the group onstage was something that was really inspiring to me. If you go to a BTS concert, you know that they can really bring the crowd in in an intimate way through their dialogue with the fans. When they were having one of these conversations with the fans and talking about going on hiatus soon, it reminded me of the Homeric myth of The Odyssey—BTS being Odysseus about to go into the military, and ARMY being Penelope, longing for their heroes. So that just made me think this could be an amazing film. I talked to Hybe about that. It didn’t work out at that time, because military service is very private and secretive, as it should be. It was a few years later, when they came out of the military, that James Shin [president of film and television at Hybe America] reached out to me and told me, “Remember when you pitched me this idea of BTS being The Odyssey? Well, they’re back, and we’d totally be interested in working with you.” He was in talks with This Machine and Jane [Cha Cutler], and Jane and I had been developing a project in the past for a while that didn’t work out. So I jumped at the opportunity to work with Jane.
