Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk laughed off the idea that the success of his Netflix series made him wealthy.
“I’m not that rich,” Hwang told The Guardian. “But I do have enough. I have enough to put food on the table. And it’s not like Netflix is paying me a bonus. Netflix paid me according to the original contract.”
Hwang wrote and directed all nine episodes of Squid Game, a South Korean series in which 456 players — all of whom are either deeply in debt or in desperate need of money — compete in a series of children’s games to win a big cash prize, with the knowledge that losing will result in their death. The critically-acclaimed survival drama reportedly cost $21.4 million to produce, yet is expected to earn Netflix upwards of $891.1 million in “impact value” (a metric the streamer uses to measure the performance of its original shows) after being viewed by 142 million subscriber households for at least two minutes in its first four weeks of release, making it Netflix’s most-watched original series to date.
The show was partly inspired by Hwang’s own real-life economic struggles in the wake of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. “I was very financially straitened because my mother retired from the company she was working for,” he explained. “There was a film I was working on but we failed to get finance. So I couldn’t work for about a year. We had to take out loans — my mother, myself and my grandmother.”
As Hwang noted, Squid Game‘s plot and social commentary are “motivated” by a basic idea: “We are fighting for our lives in very unequal circumstances.” However, he laughed off the idea the show makes a “profound” point about the failings of capitalism. “It’s not profound! It’s very simple! I do believe that the overall global economic order is unequal and that around 90% of the people believe that it’s unfair. During the [COVID-19] pandemic, poorer countries can’t get their people vaccinated. They’re contracting viruses on the streets and even dying. So I did try to convey a message about modern capitalism. As I said, it’s not profound.”
Squid Game Season 1 is streaming on Netflix. Hwang confirmed there is “of course” talk about a Season 2 and said he’s considering the idea. “[But] there’s a film I really want to make. I’m thinking about which to do first. I’m going to talk to Netflix.”
Source: The Guardian
About The Author
