Latest news with #DystopianThriller
The Independent
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Record 60 million watch hit Netflix show
The third and final season of Netflix 's Squid Game racked up over 60 million views within its first three days of release. The South Korean dystopian thriller ranked as the No. 1 show in 93 countries and accumulated 368.4 million hours of watch time since its 27 June release. The series remains Netflix's most-watched original title of all time, with its first and second seasons holding the top two spots for non-English language TV shows. Series creator Hwang Dong Hyuk said the third season's ending, which included a global recruitment scene and a Cate Blanchett cameo, was intended to make a broader point about the enduring nature of capitalism, not to set up future spin-offs. However, rumours persist about a potential US-set adaptation or spin-off, with speculation linking director David Fincher to such a project.
Bloomberg
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
New ‘Squid Game' Season Breaks Netflix Records in Win for Korea
The third season of Netflix Inc.'s blockbuster series Squid Game racked up record viewership in its first three days, reinforcing the Korean survival drama's status as a global cultural phenomenon. The final season of the dystopian thriller logged more than 60 million views in its first three days — the biggest debut in that time frame — and ranked No. 1 across all 93 countries with top 10 rankings, according to Netflix. That compares with the debut of the previous season, which drew 68 million views in the first four days.
Forbes
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Squid Game' Director Hwang Dong-Hyuk On Making Seasons 2 And 3
Squid Game creator, writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk (Photo by Ji Sang Chung) Squid Game season 3 has finally dropped, and once again, the dystopian survival thriller is captivating audiences worldwide. When the series first premiered in 2021, it became Netflix's most watched show ever and launched K-dramas into mainstream conversations in the West. For Squid Game creator, writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show's unprecedented success was unexpected—and so was the prospect of doing multiple seasons. Despite the first season's open ending—in which protagonist Seong Gi-hun is about to board a plane but instead turns around and looks directly at the camera—Hwang says that it wasn't done with a second season in mind. 'Through Gi-hun, I wanted to have the audience think about how the world that we live in—the system that we live in—isn't something that we should just take for granted. We should face it directly, question it and think about what we can do about it.' Hwang admits that at the time, he figured that if the series happened to do well and there was a strong demand for a second season, the story could pick up from the moment Gi-hun turns around. 'But I wasn't seriously considering that possibility, nor was I particularly eager to do it,' Hwang says in Korean. 'Physically and mentally, making the first season was so exhausting, so I never thought I'd want to make another season,' he adds in English. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MAY 30: Hwang Dong-hyuk speaks during Netflix's FYSEE Squid Game Season 2 ... More ATAS Official at The Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on May 30, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo byfor Netflix) South Korean actor Lee Jung-jae (L) poses with the award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama ... More Series and South Korean director Hwang Dong-hyuk (R) with the Emmy for Outstanding Directing For A Drama Series for "Squid Game" during the 74th Emmy Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, California, on September 12, 2022. (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images) What Director Hwang Considered While Making Squid Game Seasons 2 And 3 But as fate would have it, the unprecedented global success of Squid Game meant that the show would be renewed for another season. Hwang initially intended to make only one more season but ended up writing 13 episodes in six months, so he decided to break them up into two separate seasons. (L-R): Director Hwang Dong-hyuk, Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun, and Oh Yeong-su as Oh Il-nam in Squid ... More Game season 1 His most important consideration while creating seasons 2 and 3 was showing Gi-hun's transformation. 'At the beginning of season 1, you see him as this very naïve, loser-like character who's below average on all fronts. But after joining the games and going through that experience, he learns a lesson, and by the end of season 1, he's become a different person," Hwang explains. "So the main focus was, what is Gi-hun going to be capable of doing after he returns to the games? And as he recklessly attempts to stop the games, what kind of person will he become?" Hwang adds that he also wanted to explore the question that Oh Il-nam poses to Gi-hun in season 1: 'Do you still believe in humanity?' Hwang points out that "the most important theme for seasons 2 and 3 was showing what kind of answer Gi-hun arrives at by the end of his journey.' Squid Game Director Admits He's 'Kind Of A Perfectionist' Because Hwang was given only six months to write 13 episodes, he felt the script was lacking in detail. 'So all throughout pre-production and production, I kept revising the script. I'd come back from a shoot, get new ideas and then revise upcoming scenes accordingly,' he reveals. He ended up making a lot of changes to the story, including some substantial ones like rewriting the season 3 finale and altering the fates of Nam-gyu and Min-su. Besides those examples, he admits, 'It's hard to say exactly what stayed true from the beginning and which things changed, because so many details changed. I thought that was the only way I could create a script that was up to my standards.' Director Hwang Dong-hyuk and Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun in Squid Game S1 Listening to Director Hwang describe his creative process and attention to detail, one can't help but get the sense that he's very meticulous and dedicated to his craft. 'Would you say you're a perfectionist?' I ask. 'I think I can say that,' he replies. 'I'm usually a really lazy person—extremely lazy. But once I start something, I have to go all in and see it through to the end. I can't let go of it, so I end up exhausting myself. In that sense, I'm kind of a perfectionist, and maybe that's why it makes me lazier. Because I know how hard I'm going to be on myself when I start something, so I often don't want to start at all,' he says with a laugh. Director Hwang Dong-hyuk in Squid Game S2 Squid Game Casting Controversies Around T.O.P And Park Sung-Hoon Despite his somewhat perfectionist tendencies, not everything went according to plan. In particular, he shares that he wasn't quite prepared for the casting controversies that arose ahead of season 2. When Netflix announced that the cast for the second season would include South Korean rapper, actor and former BIGBANG member T.O.P (real name Choi Seung-hyun), many Koreans protested due to his past marijuana use (drug abuse is often treated as a serious crime in South Korea), though international fans largely seemed to support his casting. Choi Seung-hyun as Thanos in Squid Game S2 "I expected some backlash around T.O.P, but the reaction from the media and the internet in Korea was even more negative than I had anticipated," Hwang says. "Since there'd been many previous cases of celebrities having been away from the public eye after smoking marijuana and then making a comeback, I thought it'd be okay for Choi Seung-hyun to resume acting, since enough time had passed. I was genuinely surprised by how much backlash there was." But Hwang adds that public sentiment in Korea around T.O.P has improved since the release of season 2. "Fortunately, now that there are many people who really like his character [Thanos], and Seung-hyun has also been able to put out a sincere apology through interviews and other ways, I think the situation has been somewhat resolved." Park Sung-hoon as Hyun-ju in Squid Game S3 Meanwhile, the casting of cisgender male actor Park Sung-hoon as the transgender character Hyun-ju also sparked criticism, but mostly from international viewers. "When I first considered him for the role, I thought it was a natural choice because in Korea, there aren't any transgender actors available to play a transgender character. There's literally only one person you see on TV in Korea who is openly trans," Hwang says. "But I know there was quite a bit of backlash about that decision overseas, especially in Western countries where people may not fully understand the reality in Korea." Hwang says that both he and Park did their best to explain the casting choice publicly and mentions a moment that gave him particular comfort. 'One day, I saw this YouTube video from an American transgender influencer who said that she was initially very concerned,' Hwang says. 'But she said that after watching the show, she was extremely taken by the genuineness of Hyun-ju's character and loved her. So that made me very happy and relieved to know that our intentions had really worked.' INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA - MAY 31: Choi Seung-hyun aka T.O.P, Kang Ae-shim and Park Sung-hoon pose with ... More Squid Game pink guards at NETFLIX TUDUM 2025: THE LIVE EVENT at The Kia Forum on May 31, 2025 in Inglewood, California. (Photo byfor Netflix) Will There Be A Season 4 Of Squid Game? As for what's next for the Squid Game franchise, Hwang laughs off the possibility of a fourth season. "No, not another season. Maybe a spinoff, if the opportunity comes up. I know many people out there are curious to know the backstory of many of these characters, so I do think a spinoff could be fun,' he says. 'But it's just something that I'm tossing around—nothing has been decided yet.' NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 18: (L-R) Park Sung-hoon, Kang Ae-shim, Lee Jung-jae, Hwang Dong-hyuk, Lee ... More Byung-hun, Jo Yu-ri and Yim Si-wan attend the Netflix's Squid Game S3 New York Premiere at The Paris Theater on June 18, 2025 in New York City. (Photo byfor Netflix) With the third and final season of Squid Game finally being released out into the world, I ask him how he feels now that the blockbuster series he's created is coming to an end. 'It feels bittersweet in every sense of the word,' he answers. 'There was just so much pressure working on this show for the past six years. At first, I was worried that people might not like it. And then came the pressure of people liking it too much, and feeling like I had to meet their expectations. It felt like I was carrying a huge load on my shoulders for six years. And now that it's gone, I feel a great sense of relief." He quickly adds, 'At the same time, this project also gave me so many wonderful memories and allowed me to meet so many wonderful people. These were six of the most amazing years of my life, so I'm going to be sad to say goodbye to those moments. I'm just feeling a mix of a lot of different emotions." Squid Game season 3 is now streaming on Netflix. SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - JUNE 09: Director Hwang Dong-Hyuk, actors Lee Jung-Jae, Lee Byung-Hun, Yim ... More Si-Wan, Kang Ha-Neul, Wi Ha-Joon, Park Sung-Hoon, Lee Jin-Uk, Park Gyu-Young, Yang Dong-Geun, Chae Gook-Hee, Roh Jae-Won, Lee David, Kang Ae-Sim and Jo Yuri attend a press conference for Netflix's "Squid Game Season 3" at Seoul Dragon City on June 09, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Han Myung-Gu/WireImage)
Globe and Mail
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Squid Game's final season has a twist that will make many turn off Netflix in disgust
Much ink has been squirted over the years about Squid Game, the pop-culture phenomenon now back with its final season and a truly twisted twist that will make many viewers turn off Netflix in disgust. Most of what's been written about Hwang Dong-hyuk's series about a secretive and deadly Korean reality show has focused on its impact on the television industry. Squid Game certainly proved that South Korea could lead internationally in television as well as film and music. It cemented the fact that in the streaming age, even American audiences will watch television with subtitles en masse – if there's enough creatively grisly death in it. The show's success, too, has been a great card for Netflix to play as it has pursued global domination. To all those who have seen its worldwide expansion as cultural imperialism – as former CBC/Radio-Canada president Catherine Tait famously did – the fact that a Korean dystopian thriller remains the American streaming service's most popular series of all time was a ready riposte. So, Squid Game is significant. But how good, really, is this show about a shadowy event where 456 Koreans in dire financial straits compete in killer children's games for a vast fortune (with the losers' deaths live-streamed as entertainment for ultra-rich VIP voyeurs)? The first season in 2021 was lauded for Lee Jung-jae's central performance as unlikely hero Seong Gi-hun, the now-iconic production design and what many deemed its sharp-edged satire of late-stage capitalism. 2025 summer TV preview: The Bear is back, plus a Giller adaptation and more Star Trek But when Squid Game returned for a second season late last year, Gi-hun's motivations for going back into the game were muddy – and the reasons why Hwang In-ho, the show-runner of the evil show-within-a-show, let him back in and sometimes abetted him in undermining it were even more unclear. Those who felt the show's satire was always a mite hypocritical had their opinions confirmed by a return that seemed to have as its main motivation making more money out of images of poor Korean characters being slaughtered. But that second season was essentially unfinished – Netflix made Dong-hyuk divide it in two – and it's only now that we see his complete vision. Picking up right after Gi-hun's failed rebellion against the operators of Squid Game, the third season immediately has a string of scenes that deliver excellent payoff for the relationships that were set up among the secondary characters in the second – especially between the squabbling mother and son competing together, and in the cohort of players who are all there after having fallen for a cryptocurrency scheme. It gets very Greek, to say the least. The main dramatic engine, however, involves Jun-hee (played by former reality-show participant and singer Jo Yu-ri), who was revealed to be playing while pregnant. I'll put a spoiler alert here – spoiler alert! – before revealing that Jun-hee does give birth, even though it was heavily foreshadowed. During what may be the most brutal competition ever played on Squid Game, contestants have to choose between their own safety and helping her. The genuine surprise is where the plot with the baby goes after that, however. Without getting into details, the choices are so absurd that they absolutely explode any sense of realism in the show. Some viewers are going to see this as the moment where Squid jumped the shark. But, for me, the extreme elements redeem Squid Game's status as a darkest-of-dark satire of our world. Before you write them off as exploitative, reflect on our own real-life consumption of images of children in mortal danger – and ask yourself whether people cheering on the deaths of babies is really that much of a stretch. One criticism that certainly can't be levelled against Squid Game is that it is another show about the 1 per cent. There are the VIPs, of course, whose faces we never see; their dialogue is as badly written and poorly acted as ever this final season – leading to the conclusion that this isn't about the English-language acting pool in Seoul so much as it is a choice not to humanize them in any way. It's certainly not copaganda either – not only is the police department useless, the renegade Jun-ho (portrayed by Wi Ha-joon) has the worst instincts of any TV detective ever. The memorable characters are the players who struggle to pay their family member's medical bills, the ones who struggle with addictions that have bankrupted them, and all the angry young men whose unsettled sense of masculinity made them easy marks. And, of course, that redeemed reprobate, Gi-hun; his fantasies of heroism and righteous revenge having crumbled, his character gets the concluding arc he deserves. It's only a shame that the whole enterprise ends with a cameo by an Academy Award-winning actor that seems to confirm rumours that an English-language spinoff is on the way. Does it weaken the themes of the show – or reinforce them – that the Squid Game carnage won't end as long as there's a market for it?
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Squid Game season three trailer includes shock hated characters' return - but in 'interesting' new form
Netflix fans' prayers have been answered as the Squid Game season three first look trailer included the surprise return of old characters. The teaser, released earlier this week, for the next installment of the Netflix show, sees the so-called VIPs make a comeback on our screens. The South Korean dystopian thriller, first released in 2021 to massive acclaim, sees 456 players in financial difficulty play a series of life-or-death games, with the survivor winning a cash prize. The masked VIP characters were the anonymous wealthy spectators the games were designed for, but they were not seen in the second season. But now they are back for the highly anticipated third season, set for release on Netflix on June 27. Fans were not keen on the VIPs in the first series, with their strange masks and unnatural voice acting - but with the characters seemingly overhauled, they are feeling more open-minded this time round. The VIPs speak English in an otherwise entirely Korean-language TV show - and fans felt show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk did not write the most natural-sounding English dialogue in the first series. It was also felt the show had not been able to cast as high-quality English actors as they might have wanted. Though pop and Korean culture commentator Kayti Burt did note: 'The phenomenon of bad foreign-language acting is not specific to Squid Game, nor is specific to Korea. 'It's logical to assume that any country's entertainment industry would have a harder time casting good actors in a language that is not native to that country, especially when you think about how that pool is further diminished by work visa requirements.' But with the massive success of the show since the VIPs last featured in series one, it is thought among fans that season three might have had better luck recruiting more convincing English talent for the roles. The new VIPs are different from the previous all-male cast, with at least two women in the group. The characters' outfits are also different, with smaller masks and less ornate, gaudy clothes in some cases. The VIPs (pictured in the upcoming third series) speak English in an otherwise entirely Korean-language TV show - and fans felt show creator Hwang Dong-hyuk did not write the most natural-sounding English dialogue in the first series Fans took to Reddit to speculate about how the casting changes will come across on-screen, with one saying: 'Two female VIPs this time. Interesting.' Others added: 'Adding a female VIP was definitely an interesting move. 'I've got a feeling she's going to be way more twisted and vile than the 69 VIP [named for betting on Player 69] from series one'; 'About time a female VIP is present'; 'There are more VIPs than the original series one VIPs'; 'It surprised me that there is a completely new set of them and no one from series one returns. It's like they are aware of the criticism of the original VIPs and decided to replace them.' As to the outfits, one user said: 'These seem to dress more like a wealthy/powerful person would and not the loud, gaudy colours like season one.' The characterisation seemed to be much more genuinely scary and serious than silly this time round, one noted: 'They seem crueller and more serious than the ones in series one.' Another agreed: 'I think they [will] be more serious and mature compared to the goofy guys from series one', while someone replied to them, 'Way more creepy too'. Some Reddit commenters were really positive (pictured) Fans took to Reddit to speculate about how the casting changes will come across on-screen Squid Game fans were left 'sobbing and emotionally destroyed' after Netflix revealed the 'devastating' twist in the season three trailer (pictured Seong Gi-hun as Lee Jung-jae Some were really positive, with one saying, 'They look cool, really cool', and another adding, 'The one with the bird mask looks cool'. But a small number of users were just as sceptical of the VIPs as they were when watching series one, saying: 'They're bald as hell and masks are so small lol, seems funny.' Another simply said: 'Lunatics.' Squid Game fans were left 'sobbing and emotionally destroyed' after Netflix revealed the 'devastating' twist in this same first season three trailer. The first look at the upcoming season - which will premiere on the streaming service on June 27 - was dropped on YouTube earlier this week and it looks like it is definitely not one to miss. Protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) was seen being brought back into their sleeping area in a coffin, to which the remaining players twist a silver button to receive a ball - which appeared to indicate what team they will be in. One heartbreaking scene showed Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim) and Yong-sik (Yang Dong-geun) with different coloured balls - highlighting that they will be against each other. Right at the end Kim Jun-hee (Jo Yu-ri), who was secretly expecting a baby while playing the game, looked straight into the camera with a tear down her face... which was followed by a baby's cry.
