About Squid Game Season 1 – TV Series

Squid Game Season 1

Squid Game Season 1 Film Details

Squid Game is a South Korean survival drama television series created by Hwang Dong-hyuk for Netflix. Its cast includes Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-joon, HoYeon Jung, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung.

The series revolves around a contest where 456 players, all of whom are in deep financial hardship, risk their lives to play a series of deadly children’s games for the chance to win a ₩45.6 billion (US$38 million, €33 million, or GB£29 million as of broadcast) prize. The title of the series draws from a similarly named Korean children’s game. Hwang had conceived of the idea based on his own economic struggles early in life, as well as the class disparity in South Korea and capitalism. 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.

Squid Game was released worldwide on September 17, 2021, to critical acclaim and international attention. It is Netflix’s most-watched series, becoming the top-viewed program in 94 countries and attracting more than 142 million member households and amassing 1.65 billion viewing hours during its first four weeks from launch, surpassing Bridgerton for the title of most watched show. The series has also received numerous accolades, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor Series, Miniseries or Television Film for O Yeong-su and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for Lee Jung-jae and HoYeon Jung, respectively, with all three making history as the first Korean actors to win in those categories. The first series received fourteen Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for Best Drama, making it the first non-English language work to be nominated in this category.

In June 2022, the series was renewed for a second season, which is slated to be broadcast by late 2023 or early 2024. Netflix is also developing a reality competition program based on Squid Game, featuring 456 players competing for a large cash prize.

Squid Game Season 1 - TV Series Free Download 📥 - Gamingwap

STORY

Seong Gi-hun, a divorced father and indebted gambler who lives with his elderly mother, is invited to play a series of children’s games for a chance at a large cash prize. Accepting the offer, he is taken to an unknown location where he finds himself among 455 other players who are all in deep financial trouble. The players are made to wear green tracksuits and are kept under watch at all times by masked guards in pink jumpsuits, with the games overseen by the Front Man, who wears a black mask and black uniform. The players soon discover that losing a game results in their death, with each death adding ₩100 million to the potential ₩45.6 billion grand prize. Gi-hun allies with other players, including his childhood friend Cho Sang-woo and North Korean defector Kang Sae-byeok, to try to survive the physical and psychological twists of the games.

PRODUCTION

Around 2008, Hwang Dong-hyuk had tried unsuccessfully to get investment for a different movie script that he had written, and he, his mother, and his grandmother had to take out loans to stay afloat, but still struggled amid the debt crisis within the country. He spent his free time in a Manhwabang (South Korean manga cafe) reading Japanese survival manga such as Battle Royale, Liar Game and Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji.Hwang compared the characters’ situation in these works to his own current situation and considered the idea of being able to join such a survival game to win money to get him out of debt, leading him to write a film script on that concept throughout 2009. Hwang stated, “I wanted to write a story that was an allegory or fable about modern capitalist society, something that depicts an extreme competition, somewhat like the extreme competition of life. But I wanted it to use the kind of characters we’ve all met in real life.” Hwang feared the storyline was “too difficult to understand and bizarre” at the time. Hwang tried to sell his story to various Korean production groups and actors, but had been told it was too grotesque and unrealistic. Hwang put this script aside without any takers, and over the next ten years successfully completed three other films, including the crime drama film Silenced (2011) and the historical drama film The Fortress (2017).

In the 2010s, Netflix had seen a large growth in viewership outside of North America, and started investing in productions in other regions, including Korea. Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, stated in 2018 that they were looking for more successes from overseas productions: “The exciting thing for me would be if the next Stranger Things came from outside America. Right now, historically, nothing of that scale has ever come from anywhere but Hollywood.” Netflix had opened up a division in Asia in 2018, and while they were still operating out of temporary leased office space in Seoul, Hwang brought his script to their attention. Kim Minyoung, one of Netflix’s content officers for the Asian regions, recognized Hwang’s talent from The Fortress and his other films, and upon seeing his script for Squid Game, knew they needed it for the service. Kim said “[W]e were looking for shows that were different from what’s traditionally ‘made it,’ and Squid Game was exactly it”. Netflix formally announced in September 2019 they would produce Hwang’s work as an original series. Netflix’s Bela Bajaria, head of global television operations, said that of their interest in Hwang’s work, “we knew it was going to be big in Korea because it had a well-regarded director with a bold vision”, and that “K-Dramas also travel well across Asia”. Regarding his return to the project, Hwang commented, “It’s a sad story. But the reason why I returned to the project is because the world 10 years from then has transformed to a place where these unbelievable survival stories are so fitting, and I found that this is the time when people will call these stories intriguing and realistic.” Hwang further believed that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic impacted the economic disparity between classes in South Korea, and said that “All of these points made the story very realistic for people compared to a decade ago”.

With the Netflix order, the film concept was expanded out to a nine-episode series. Kim stated that there was “so much more than what was written in the 120-minute format. So we worked together to turn it into a series.” Hwang said he was able to expand the script so that it “could focus on the relationships between people [and] the stories that each of the people had”. Initially, Netflix had named the series Round Six, rather than Squid Game as Hwang had suggested; according to Netflix’s vice president for content in Asia Kim Minyoung, while they knew that the name “squid game” would be familiar to Korean viewers from the children’s game, it “wouldn’t resonate because not many people would get it”, and opted to use Round Six as it self-described the nature of the competition. As production continued, Hwang pushed on the service to use Squid Game instead, which Kim said its cryptic name and the unique visuals helped to draw in curious viewers. At the time that Hwang wrote the series, his goal was for having the series reach the most-watched show in Netflix in the United States for at least one day. Hwang had initially written the series as eight episodes, which was comparable to other Netflix shows, but found that the material for the last episode was longer than he planned, so it was split into two.

CASTING

Hwang said he chose to cast Lee Jung-jae as Gi-hun as to “destroy his charismatic image portrayed in his previous roles”. HoYeon Jung was requested by her new management company to send a video to audition for the series while she was finishing a shoot in Mexico and preparing for New York Fashion Week. Although this was her first audition as an actor and her expectations were low, Hwang said, “The moment I saw her audition tape from New York, I immediately thought to myself, ‘this is the girl we want.’ My first impression of her was that she is wild and free like an untamed horse”. On casting Ali Abdul, Hwang said, “It was hard to find good foreign actors in Korea.” He chose Anupam Tripathi because of his emotional acting capabilities and fluency in Korean. Both Gong Yoo and Lee Byung Hun had worked with Hwang during his previous films, Silenced and The Fortress respectively, and Hwang had asked both to appear in small roles within Squid Game. The VIPs were selected from non-Korean actors living in Asia; in the case of Geoffrey Giuliano, who played the VIP that interacted with Jun-ho, his prior role from Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula led to his casting for Squid Game.