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The gory, dystopian South Korean thriller Squid Game is the most popular series Netflix has ever released. This week, it drops season two — in the midst of the company’s efforts to grow the show beyond the screen.
On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, host Rebecca Choong Wilkins talks to Bloomberg’s Sohee Kim and Lucas Shaw about the new season, the story of how the show was nearly never made and all the ways Netflix is trying to expand Squid Game into a global franchise — from reality TV and video games to in-person fan experiences.
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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:
Young-hee (in Korean): Red light…green lightRebecca Choong Wilkins: If that sound immediately filled you with panic and dread, you’re likely one of the many — many — fans of Squid Game – the gory, dystopian South Korean TV series – which is coming back for a second season this week.
Front Man (in Korean): Player 456. Welcome back to the game.
Choong Wilkins: Welcome back to the game indeed. The first season of Squid Game generated an estimated $900 million in value for Netflix and the show was a hit around the globe.
Lucas Shaw: Season one of Squid Game was the most popular season of television Netflix has ever released.
Choong Wilkins: That’s Lucas Shaw, a Bloomberg editor covering media and entertainment.
Shaw: No show since then has eclipsed it.
Choong Wilkins: To promote the show, Netflix is running one of the largest promotion campaigns in the company’s history, in South Korea and around the world. Earlier this month in Paris, hundreds of people descended on the Champs-Elysees to compete for tickets to watch the season two premiere. You can hear how much one of the team captains, a YouTuber named Inoxtag, is trying to pump up the crowd in this video posted on his channel.
Inoxtag (in French): An exceptional live, in collaboration with Squid Game and Netflix…
Choong Wilkins: In New York, Netflix set up an escape room experience, where excited fans are testing out their own survival instincts – and then posting videos on YouTube.
Player: Oh he’s out!Announcement: Player two, 13. You have been eliminated.
Choong Wilkins: And in Spain and Portugal, fans can eat a special Squid Game-themed KFC meal.
Announcement (in Spanish): Hi players, the new KFC and Squid Game has arrived. Burger, wings and chips…
Sohee Kim: Those pink suit guards could be found everywhere from Bondi Beach to Champs-Elysees, a real size Young-hee doll flowing on the river of Bangkok.
Choong Wilkins: Sohee Kim is Bloomberg’s Asia entertainment reporter based in Seoul.
Kim: I've never seen any kind of global marketing on a single drama series bigger than this.
Choong Wilkins: All these live events, experiences and collaborations with other brands are part of a bigger strategy for Netflix – to extend the show’s popularity by growing it beyond the screens.
Shaw: Netflix wants to turn this into something that wasn't just a one-off, you know, sensation in 2021 and be a show that can last throughout the decade.
Choong Wilkins: Lucas and Sohee got to visit the set where they filmed season two of Squid Game. They talked to the show’s director Hwang Dong-hyuk about his journey, and how season two almost never even got made.
Welcome to the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I’m Rebecca Choong Wilkins. Every week, we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies, and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever-shifting region. Today on the show: Netflix’s big bet on expanding Squid Game into a global franchise.
Choong Wilkins: Squid Game dropped in September 2021 at the height of the pandemic. And almost overnight, the nine-episode series blew up into a global phenomenon. Sohee, for people who haven’t watched Squid Game, what is the story about?
Kim: Squid Game is a survival thriller story around Seong Gi-hun, who's a gambling addict and is really broke. He gets invited to this mysterious death or life competition on a hidden island in South Korea, where he's invited to play in these children's games. The ultimate winner over hundreds of other competitors receives a large cash prize, and I will leave it at that so to not spoil it.
Choong Wilkins: Well, spoiler alert. The premise of the show is that if you win these playground games, you get rich. Really rich. But if you lose, you get killed. So…it does get quite violent. So Sohee, the people in the show take these great risks in pursuit of money – what does director Hwang hope that people will take away from the show?
Kim: I talked to the director…
Hwang Dong-hyuk (in Korean): The story of Squid Game was really about the unlimited competition of capitalist society and how unequal that is. The inequity of that playing field. So as long as Squid Games continue, that story is going to be a reoccurring thing.
Kim: And he told us that the story is really about the unlimited competition of capitalist society and how unequal that is. The show explores themes of the gap between the rich and the poor and how far people will go for money.
Choong Wilkins: And what did director Hwang tell you about what inspired him to write this kind of story?
Kim: Um, his own financial problem. So it was during the global financial crisis in 2008. The financial crisis hit the content market in South Korea as well. And director Hwang went almost broke. He had less than like $10 in his bank account, nothing to do but reading comic books, being hopeless, and resentful against the society. And the only way out from this desperate reality emerged in his imagination, like questioning himself, what if there's a survival game that could turn his life upside down and make him a millionaire and what kinds of games he would be winning and make him the final survivor. So the script from the life or death situation has become the Squid Game.
Choong Wilkins: But once he had the story down, Sohee says Hwang had a hard time selling the script to Korean production houses and broadcasting stations. He says they thought it was too violent, confusing and expensive to make. So Hwang went to work on something else – directing films and waiting for the right buyer for Squid Game to come around. And a decade later, in 2018, he finally found someone interested in buying it – Netflix.
Kim: Netflix launched its streaming service in 2016 in South Korea. The main strategy of Netflix has been focused on local stories for local audiences. So Netflix picked up the idea of Hwang’s script around 2018. So yes, it was a lucky deal for Hwang as well and for Netflix.
Choong Wilkins: Netflix bought the show and focused mainly on promoting it to a regional audience.
Kim: So Netflix didn't heavily promote the show when it first came out it was targeting Korean and some local audiences in Asia.
Choong Wilkins: But then, the series took the world by storm. For a time, it topped Netflix’s list of the most-watched titles on every continent. The show won multiple Emmy awards and was spoofed on Saturday Night Live – the ultimate signal in the US that something has broken into the culture – when SNL can name-check it, no explanation needed.
Pete Davidson: Yes I’m broke and it’s a damn shame. Guess I gotta play the Squid Game. (laughter) Yes I gotta play the Squid Game. My only option is the Squid Game.
Choong Wilkins: It was clear that the company had a hit on their hands. And naturally, they wanted to keep that going. But, they had a problem. At the end of the first season, Hwang initially had no plans for writing a second. The director told Sohee that making season one was so intense that he lost seven or eight teeth during the process.
Hwang: Honestly after the first season launched, I said, “no there’s no second season” because it was so challenging. I lost so many teeth, it was just too tough. I never wanted to do a series again and that's what I told them.
Choong Wilkins: And yet – there were financial reasons to press ahead. Netflix had paid for the first season of the show almost entirely up front which meant that many cast members didn’t immediately share in the company’s windfall. And despite some one-time bonuses for the team behind the show, Hwang said he felt like the second season would provide the team with a better chance to get more compensation.
Hwang: And I said this many times, even though season one was a mega hit and a huge global success, to be honest, from the creators’ side, we don’t receive the economic compensation right away, because it's not set up like the revenue you get from box office tickets or anything like that. So we felt like we had to do a second season that would provide a more adequate compensation befitting the success of this show.
Choong Wilkins: So Sohee, season two premieres this week – what are we expecting?
Kim: More killings…
Choong Wilkins: (Laughter) Brilliant.
Kim: More storylines, more characters. I'm not like giving any of like secret spoilers, but it will be very interesting and there will be new games, I believe.
Choong Wilkins: After the break, how Netflix is capitalizing on Squid Game’s success, and can the hype for the show last?
Choong Wilkins: Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, who covers media and entertainment, says that the popularity of Squid Game has translated into real revenue for Netflix.
Shaw: Netflix doesn't break down revenue to any specific shows. However, in the weeks after the first season of the show came out, I obtained some internal documents that suggested Netflix thought that the show was worth about $900 million to the company or would be.
Choong Wilkins: And how does that 900 million compare to other big global Netflix hits?
Shaw: That we don't know because I didn't get documents that sort of compared it to a bunch of others. I did see it relative to a few other titles, including some stand-up specials, and you know, it's much, much bigger than any of those. And it's pretty clear that Netflix, after the success of season one, wanted to try to build off of that and turn it into sort of a larger franchise because they thought that that would increase the value of the company.
Choong Wilkins: In addition to season two, Netflix also announced that it would premiere Squid Game season three – its final season– in 2025. And more episodes of the series are just one way Netflix has been capitalizing on the show’s success. Since the show’s release, Netflix has been building out the franchise in other ways too.
Shaw: They started developing a video game tied to Squid Game. They started developing a reality television show tied to the show. There's a Squid Game experience in a few cities where fans can go play the challenges from the show. There's a ton of consumer product integrations, right? There's special edition tracksuits and skin care and Crocs. So yeah, if you have a popular property, you want to find ways to exploit it in as many ways as possible and keep it fresh in the minds of your customer and give them different ways to interact with it because it will make them love it more.
Choong Wilkins: And Lucas says expanding on existing franchises like Squid Game is not just potentially lucrative, but necessary for Netflix’s business. Because as the company gets bigger and bigger, it’s hard to find new customers.
Shaw: Well, the original Squid Game was a huge catalyst for Netflix in Asia, and so there's a strong desire for that to continue. Netflix would like to see it help attract more customers, certainly in South Korea, where there's strong national pride about the show, but also in Japan and Southeast Asia and other parts of the world where it's still trying to grow a lot.
It's very difficult to predict something brand new that people like. But once you have something that you know is successful, it's much safer to make more of it, because you know that there’s an audience for it. S0 Netflix wants to have those tentpole franchises that they can have in every quarter to make sure that it serves as an attraction for potential new customers.
Choong Wilkins: So we've got the sequel, in fact a trilogy, reality TV show, video game, merch, potential movie spinoff, these sort of in-person experiences. Is it fair to say it's kind of like the Harry Potter of South Korea?
Shaw: (Laughter) Um, you know, look, I'm reluctant to call it the Harry Potter of South Korea because a show about people basically like in this competition where they all die just doesn't lend itself naturally you'd think to franchises, or to exploitation. Harry Potter has been a cultural touchstone now for 25 years. And it's going to continue to be for the next 25, 50, 75 years. My kids are going to be reading them, my kids’ kids might be reading them. I think the odds of Squid Game having that kind of longevity are pretty low. I don't think that like people are going to be obsessing over Squid Game in 50 years. I could be wrong. I'd be happy to be wrong. But it feels like a show that really defines a particular decade and moment in time.
Choong Wilkins: Lucas, do you have a prediction of how long we’ll continue to see the show ricocheting through the Netflix universe?
Shaw: The hype will continue as long as Netflix can keep more of the show going. The hits in this modern age burn bright and burn fast for the most part, right? Unless you keep it going. Disney puts out new Marvel stuff every year. They try to put out new Star Wars every year. Universal puts out new Fast and Furious every couple years. The key to these franchises is the right balance between keeping it in the culture and zeitgeist so people are interacting with it and relating to it without overexposing it so that people get tired of it.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.