Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has revealed how his own personal experience with poverty and some key manga inspired the hit Netflix show.
Hwang was asked by The Hollywood Reporter about how he got the idea for Squid Game. "So back in 2008, I had a script that I had written, which I was running around with trying to get investment, but it didn't work out and it wasn't made into a movie," Hwang explained. "So that actually put me into a really difficult financial situation — I was broke. So I spent a lot of time killing time in comic book cafes, reading. And I read a lot of comic books revolving around surviving death games — manga like Liar Game, Kaiji and Battle Royale. And well, I read some stories about these indebted people entering into these life and death games, and that became really immersive for me because I was struggling financially myself. I was even thinking that I would love to join a game like that, if it existed, to make a bunch of cash and get out of this terrible situation."
Hwang continued, "And then that got me thinking… Well, I'm a director; why don’t I just make a movie with this kind of storyline? So that's how it all got started. I decided that I wanted to create a Korean survival game piece in my own way. That's how Squid Game was initially conceived in 2008; and then I wrote a script for a feature-length film version throughout 2009."
The three properties that Hwang mentions -- Shinobu Kaitani's Liar Game, Nobuyuki Fukumoto's Kaiji and Koushun Takami's Battle Royale -- are all generally considered part of the death game/survival genre. Works in the genre generally revolve around tournaments that can result in the loss of life, though winning means getting a ton of money.
While Hwang wrote the script for the film version of Squid Game in 2009, the project didn't get picked up until 2019. The show released on Netflix on Sept. 17 and has proven a huge success for the streaming service. More than 111 million households viewed Squid Game during its first 28 days on the platform, making it Netflix's biggest series launch ever. As of writing, Squid Game Season 1 has a 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Despite the show's success, Squid Game has not been renewed for Season 2 at the time of writing. Still, Hwang does have some ideas for where Squid Game could go in Season 2.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter