Squid game

 This article is about the Netflix television series. For the Korean children's game, see Squid (game). For the video game, see Squids (games).

Squid Game (Korean : 오징어 게임; RR: Ojing-eo Geim) is a South Korean  survival drama  television series on Netflix  created by Hwang Dong-hyuk , who wrote and directed all nine episodes. Its cast includes Lee jung-jae , Park Hae-soo , Wi Ha-Joon , Jung Ho-yeon , Heo sung-tae , Anupam Tripathi , and Kim Joo-ryoung .

The series revolves around a contest where 456 players, all of whom are in deep financial debt, risk their lives to play a series of deadly children's games  for the chance to win a  ₩ 45.6 billion prize. The title of the series draws from a similarly named Korean children's games . Hwang had conceived of the idea based on his own economic struggles early in life as well as the class disparity in South Korea and capitalism . Though he had initially written it in 2009, he was unable to find a production company to fund the idea until Netflix took an interest around 2019 as part of their drive to expand their foreign programming offerings.

Squid Game was released worldwide on September 17, 2021, to critical acclaim and international attention. It is Netflix's most-watched series to date, reaching the top-viewed program in 94 countries, and attracting more than 142 million member households during its first four weeks from launch, surpassing 2020's Bridgerton . A second season is currently in the pre-production phase as of November 2021.

Seong Gi-hun, a divorced father and indebted gambler who lives with his elderly mother, is invited to play a series of children's games for a chance at a large cash prize. Accepting the offer, he is taken to an unknown location where he finds himself among 456 players who are all deeply in debt. The players are made to wear green tracksuits  and are kept under watch at all times by masked guards in pink jumpsuits , with the games overseen by the Front Man, who wears a black mask and black uniform. The players soon discover that losing a game results in their death, with each death adding ₩100 million to the potential ₩45.6 billion grand prize.  Gi-hun allies with other players, including his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo, to try to survive the physical and psychological twists of the games.

Around 2008, Hwang Dong-hyuk had tried unsuccessfully to get investment for a different movie script that he had written, and he, his mother, and his grandmother had to take out loans to stay afloat, but still struggled amid the debt crises of the country .  He spent his free time in cafes reading Japanese manga  such as Battle royal , Liar Game and Gambling Apocalypse : Kaiji  and survival game novels like The hunger game .  Hwang compared the characters' situation in these works to his own current situation and considered the idea of being able to join such a survival game to win money to get him out of debt, leading him to write a film script on that concept throughout 2009. Hwang stated, "I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life." Hwang feared the storyline was "too difficult to understand and bizarre" at the time. Hwang tried to sell his story to various Korean production groups and actors, but had been told it was too grotesque and unrealistic. Hwang put this script aside without any takers, and over the next ten years successfully completed three other films, including the crime drama  film silenced (2011) and the historical drama  film the fortrees (2017).

In the 2010s, Netflix  had seen a large growth in viewership outside of North America, and started investing in productions in other regions, including Korea.  Ted Sarandos , co-CEO of Netflix, stated in 2018 that they were looking for more successes from overseas productions: "The exciting thing for me would be if the next  Stranger things  came from outside America. Right now, historically, nothing of that scale has ever come from anywhere but Hollywood." Netflix had opened up a division in Asia in 2018, and while they were still operating out of temporary leased office space in Seoul, Hwang brought his script to their attention. Kim Minyoung, one of Netflix's content officers for the Asian regions, recognized Hwang's talent from The Fortress and his other films, and upon seeing his script for Squid Game, knew they needed it for the service. Kim said "[W]e were looking for shows that were different from what's traditionally 'made it,' and Squid Game was exactly it".  Netflix formally announced in September 2019 they would produce Hwang's work as an original series. Netflix's Bela Bajaria, head of global television operations, said that of their interest in Hwang's work, "we knew it was going to be big in Korea because it had a well-regarded director with a bold vision", and that "K-Dramas also travel well across Asia". Regarding his return to the project, Hwang commented, "It's a sad story. But the reason why I returned to the project is because the world 10 years from then has transformed to a place where these unbelievable survival stories are so fitting, and I found that this is the time when people will call these stories intriguing and realistic." Hwang further believed that the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020 and 2021 impacted the economic disparity between classes in South Korea, and said that "All of these points made the story very realistic for people compared to a decade ago".

With the Netflix order, the film concept was expanded out to a nine-episode series. Kim stated that there was "so much more than what was written in the 120-minute format. So we worked together to turn it into a series." Hwang said he was able to expand the script so that it "could focus on the relationships between people [and] the stories that each of the people had". Initially, Netflix had named the series Round Six, rather than Squid Game as Hwang had suggested; according to Netflix's vice president for content in Asia Kim Minyoung, while they knew that the name "squid game" would be familiar to Korean viewers from the children's game, it "wouldn't resonate because not many people would get it", and opted to use Round Six as it self-described the nature of the competition. As production continued, Hwang pushed on the service to use Squid Game instead, which Kim said its cryptic name and the unique visuals helped to draw in curious viewers. At the time that Hwang wrote the series, his goal was for having the series reach the most-watched show in Netflix in the United States for at least one day.