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Squid Game (Korean: 오징어 게임; RR: Ojing-eo Geim) is a South Korean survival drama television series streaming on Netflix. Written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, it stars Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-joon, Jung Ho-yeon, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung.[2] The series, distributed by Netflix, was released worldwide on September 17, 2021.[3][4]
The series revolves around a contest in which 456 players, all drawn from different walks of life but each deeply in debt, play a series of children's games with deadly penalties if they lose for the chance to win a ₩45.6 billion prize.[a] Hwang had conceived of the idea based on his own economic struggles early in life as well as the class disparity in South Korea. 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. Hwang wrote and directed all nine episodes himself . . .
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Squid Game
Squid Game: the hellish horrorshow taking the whole world by storm
In the gory thriller that has swiftly become a smash hit on Netflix, competitors play children’s games for huge cash prizes … and if they lose, they die. Can you stomach it?
Henry Wong
Tue 28 Sep 2021 11.19 BST Last modified on Sat 9 Oct 2021 09.07 BST
What if winning playground games could make you rich? That’s the basis of Squid Game – the South Korean show currently at number one on Netflix around the world – where debt-ridden players sign up to compete in six games for a cash prize of 45.6 billion won (around £28m). The small print: if you lose, you get killed. In the first episode, a game of Grandma’s Footsteps (known as Red Light, Green Light in South Korea) leaves bodies piled high as the shell-shocked winners proceed to round two. It’s blood-splattered child’s play – a kind of Takeshi’s Castle with fatalities, or Saw with stylish shell suits.
If you can stomach the events of the first episode, what follows is a tightly written horror thriller that has captivated viewers. The nine-part series is the first Korean show to reach the top spot on the streaming platform in the US, and is currently number one in the UK. Its success won’t come as a surprise to a generation of viewers who got hooked on murderous dystopian series The Hunger Games and cult favourite Battle Royale. But Squid Game’s backdrop is South Korea’s present-day, very real wealth inequality . . .
