The documentary BTS: The Return had a high bar to reach from the outset: How do you show a new side of the world’s biggest musical group? While their Netflix pop-doc debut may be the first time passive listeners become more familiar with the group, for many members of BTS’s dedicated (at times overprotective) fan base, ARMY, it follows their 11 HYBE-produced docs, long-running variety shows, and countless livestreams on the fan platform Weverse. It’s no easy feat to present fans of the most-documented band of all time with something unique.
Still, the seven-piece is at an unprecedented moment in their career. The group has been on hiatus for four years; after all the members completed their mandatory military service last year, they moved to L.A. for two months to work on what would become their comeback album, ARIRANG. The matured boy group faced a crossroads at a moment when they were also at their most visible: Where does “a global emotional support system, a cultural juggernaut…[and] a multibillion-dollar economic ecosystem” go from here?
BTS: The Return follows that journey, while introducing both new fans and old to the K-pop phenomenon at their most personal and experimental. Produced by Martha and Marc and Sofia producer Jane Cha Cutler and helmed by The Greatest Night in Pop director Bao Nguyen, the film captures RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook in both domestic settings in L.A. and the studio, continuing through to their comeback preparations upon their return to Seoul. Throughout, viewers are placed in the band’s POV, as they get candid about the pressures of the album’s fast-tracked release schedule and debate with their label on making their music relatable and accessible to a global audience.
Though BTS has already filmed over 100 hours of content since their debut in 2013, Nguyen and Cha Cutler’s documentary marks the first time the group has worked with a production team outside their label/management HYBE. Nguyen tells Marie Claire how essential it was to establish a vulnerable trust with the members, in a private interview at the Four Seasons Hotel Seoul, hours before the band’s highly anticipated performance at BTS THE COMEBACK LIVE | ARIRANG. “It’s important: that relationship that we have to build together, and the trust that they instill in me and our team to tell the story…I always say I’m not trying to make films about people. I’m trying to make films with people.”
With BTS: The Return out on Netflix now, Nguyen and Cha Cutler chat with Marie Claire about being a fly-on-the-wall in the band’s recording sessions, bringing their relationship with fans to the screen, and how they’ve reacted to the film.
Bao Nguyen: I had originally talked to some people at the label previously during their SoFi [shows in 2021] and had this idea of it being this sort of Homeric myth, like The Odyssey. That didn’t work out, but when they came back, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is the craziest opportunity. I was surprised and honored that they had reached out about it. To be honest, I was super busy with other projects, but I was like, We’ve got to find a way to make this work. It worked out perfectly because it’s such a specific moment in their next chapter.
Jane Cha Cutler: I had actually talked to HYBE America soon after [the members] went into military service, and tried to stake my flag in the ground, like, “I really want to do the documentary when they come back.” So I would just check in every so often. And then it turned out great because Bao and I knew each other from working together and developing together.
MC: How long did it take for you to establish that comfort with the group where they were able to be super vulnerable on camera?
BN: I think because they are used to being on camera and have had many documentary crews with them, they were easier than a lot of other film participants and previous projects I’ve worked on. But at the same time, you’re letting these strangers into your world that’s really intimate, that’s really personal. So it was over time that they opened up, in terms of what they were going to talk about.
