It’s been a big week for Squid Game fans. On Sunday, Netflix announced that the hugely popular South Korean show was definitely returning for a second season.
“And now, Gi-hun returns,” director and writer Hwang Dong-hyuk said. “The Front Man returns. Season 2 is coming.”
Not content with just that news, Netflix also announced a real-life version of Squid Game – clearly the struggling streaming platform has decided the best way to recover is by milking its most popular show until its initial meaning is all but forgotten.
The commercialisation and commodification of Squid Game was an inevitability given its huge success – we’ve had all sorts of tie-ins, including Funko Pop figurines – but creating an actual reality series based on a survival drama about wealth inequality is comically on the nose.
You remember the plot of Squid Game: hundreds of desperately debt-ridden people fight it out to the bloody death for a chance to win a lot of money and escape poverty, all while an audience of seedy wealthy, masked VIPs watch on gleefully.
YouTuber Supreme MrBeast already recreated the competition in real life, spending $3.5 million to produce a video that lasted less than 30 minutes, but now Netflix wants a go at it.
To be fair, their prize money of $4.56 million is a lot more than MrBeast’s comparatively paltry $456,000, but with 456 contestants set to fight it out for the windfall, it’ll be a tough ask.
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Titled Squid Game: The Challenge, the show is being hailed as “the biggest reality competition series ever created” (simply see above), with the whopping $4.56 million reportedly the largest cash prize ever offered on reality television.
Thankfully, the deadly children’s games in the original Squid Game won’t involve the actual deaths of contestants, although they will supposedly still be rather terrifying. “The stakes are high, but in this game the worst fate is going home empty-handed,” is how the press release put it.
Production is expected to being in the U.K. early next year. If you’re brave enough and not entirely traumatised from watching Squid Game, any English-language speaker over the age of 21 can apply now at SquidGameCasting.com.
In the meantime, read our navel-gazing look at where Squid Game might go in season two; after that explosive and twist-filled finale, there a follow-up was a must.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=445Nasy2Wq8
