GAME CHANGER
DYSTOPIAN SURVIVAL THRILLER SQUID GAME TOOK THE PLANET BY STORM, BECOMING NETFLIX’S MOST WATCHED SHOW EVER. AHEAD OF THE BLOOD-SOAKED SECOND SEASON, THOSE RESPONSIBLE TELL US WE AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET
WORDS TOM ELLEN
IF you thought taking part in Squid Game looked stressful, wait until you hear about making it. “I lost six teeth due to [stress] during the first season,” says the show’s creator, Hwang Donghyuk. “Actually, it was probably more than six,” he reflects, surprisingly matter-of-factly. “It was very tough. But I tried to ignore the pain and stick it out. I tried to keep going.”
He succeeded, and the result was not only a hefty dental bill, but one of the biggest, wildest TV shows of the century. Landing on Netflix back in September 2021, Squid Game tracked the (mis)fortunes of debt-addled South Korean chauffeur Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), who is coerced into a secret series of deadly playground games, hoping to win a whopping cash prize. The series set out its bombastic stall in the very first episode, when what appears to be an innocent spin on Grandmother’s Footsteps spirals into a bloodbath, complete with a giant, mechanised doll machine-gunning anyone in its eyeline.
The inventively gory action —combined with a sinuous plot and some highly snazzy jumpsuits —banked celebrity fans from LeBron James to Tom Holland to Liam Gallagher (“It’s not rite [sic] in the head,” was Gallagher’s succinct summary of the series on Twitter), and notched a frankly ludicrous 1.65 billion worldwide viewing hours in its first four weeks, becoming Netflix’s most watched show ever.
“I didn’t dare imagine that level of success,” admits Hwang, speaking to Empire via translator over Zoom from Seoul. “It was very shocking. The amount of love [for the series] was like an atomic bomb. It was so explosive.” A second season was inevitable. But with that second season came a question: how on Earth to create something even bigger, wilder, less rite-in-thehead than the first outing ?