Studios rejected Squid Game for 10 years before Netflix took a chance on it

Squid Game, a South Korean Netflix show about a world where people enter a competition where they play children’s games for a chance to win big money…if they live, which most don’t. It’s a pretty bleak dystopian tale, so maybe it’s understandable that studios were hesitant to go all in on it for a while. But considering that it’s on its way to being Netflix’s most-watched series ever, I bet they’re all kicking themselves right about now.

This information comes from The Wall Street Journal, which interviewed writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk. According to the paper, Dong-hyuk wrote the scripts while living with his mother and grandmother, and was interrupted when he had was broke and had to sell his laptop for $675. I’ll bet he was willing to play a deadly game of Red Light, Green Light if it went winning a pile of money about then.

Per The WSJ, “potential investors and actors” balked “at the brutal killings and implausibility of individuals competing to the death for money.” But things shifted when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and underscored the vast disparity between the rich and poor. “The world has changed,” Dong-hyuk said. “All of these points made the story very realistic for people compared to a decade ago.”

Suk-Young Kim, head of theater and performance studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, also weighed in. “Squid Game is a story of underdogs, relatable for people who struggle, that resonates with younger audiences, much like how the K-pop band BTS became a voice for millennials,” she said. “Korea is no longer an exotic site where only a certain dedicated fandom culture exists. It’s a major cultural hub with rising prominence in Hollywood and on Billboard charts.”

Wait, did BTS become a voice for millennials? I thought they were a voice for Zoomers. Whatever, we’re getting off track.

Squid Game season 1 is on Netflix now

In any case, it’s cool to see a unique idea vindicated, even if it is a unique idea about people being so deeply in debt they’re willing to risk almost certain death in a humiliating game show to get out of it. Clearly it touched a nerve.

Netflix is exploring the possibility of another season but nothing’s been announced yet. But given the popularity of the show and the fact that Dong-hyuk doesn’t have any other commitments at the moment, you figure it’s only a matter of time.

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h/t SyFy Wire