A new reality competition series based on Squid Game is heading to Netflix
Break out the dalgona candy (but definitely, definitely don't break them...)
Aux News Netflix
Squid Game fans will soon have an opportunity to try on the green jumpsuit themselves, if they dare. Netflix has green-lit a new reality series, Squid Game: The Challenge, based on the breakout dystopian drama.
Netflix’s head of global TV, Bela Bajaria, announced the big news on Tuesday at the Banff World Media Festival in Alberta, Canada, per Variety. Advertised by Netflix as the “biggest reality competition series ever,” 450 players will compete for a prize of $4.56 million dollars.
A Squid Game-based reality series seems to immediately beg two questions: 1) How are they playing this? and 2) Who is playing this? Without spoiling too much (although, by goodness, it’s been a year), the original Squid Game follows a group of players who enter a mysterious reality competition in the hopes of winning big bucks, only to realize the consequences for not winning are both brutal and deadly.
Of course, Squid Game: The Challenge won’t actually be deadly. “The stakes are high, but in this game the worst fate is going home empty-handed,” the casting website states, assuring potential participants their life isn’t literally on the line in this version of the competition.
The rest of the competition formatting, however—from the random challenges to the large number of contestants—appears to remain the same. The 10-episode first season is currently holding castings around the world, seeking “English-language speakers from any part of the world” to join in. The series will be filmed in the U.K., per Variety.
“Squid Game took the world by storm with Director Hwang [Dong-Hyuk]’s captivating story and iconic imagery. We’re grateful for his support as we turn the fictional world into reality in this massive competition and social experiment,” said Brandon Riegg, Netflix’s VP of unscripted and documentary Series, per Variety. “Fans of the drama series are in for a fascinating and unpredictable journey as our 456 real world contestants navigate the biggest competition series ever, full of tension and twists, with the biggest ever cash prize at the end.”
12 Comments
My initial reaction was far too vulgar to repeat here.I’ll instead share my extreme disappointment in Hwang Dong-Hyuk for allowing the integrity of his story and message to be so thoroughly compromised.
Could there have been a Faustian bargain made? Like in order to get S1 made, he gave ownership of the IP to them. Or did Netflix just back a dump truck of money up to his house?
Upvoted for vaguest comment of the day
Then upvote it!Hmm, I wonder what I could possibly take umbrage with here. We may never know. Truly one of the great mysteries of our time why I might bristle at the world’s pre-eminent anti-capitalist piece of entertainment becoming another one of its mascots.
Truly one of the great mysteries of our time why I might bristle at the
world’s pre-eminent anti-capitalist piece of entertainment becoming
another one of its mascots.
“Becoming”? As opposed to the money/exposure made through its distribution and merchandising with famously anti-capitalist Netflix?
The smart “socialists” know to profit off of the dumb ones, same as always. “Anti-capitalism” for the most part is just another sales pitch/targeted demographic.
I haven’t seen the show (well the Pete Davidson / Rami Malek SNL skit was remarkably thorough that I almost don’t have to watch it now) but as stated the stakes aren’t fatal so it just basically seems like some fun branded challenge game cosplay.
You should’ve stopped at “I haven’t seen the show.”
I understand why fans might be disappointed about this – obviously it’s a particularly unpleasant bit of irony – but I don’t think it’s some grand betrayal.I think there are parallels to be made with Parasite: both Korean, both with strong anti-capitalist themes, both achieving great success worldwide. But people had this idea that because Bong and Hwang weren’t from the American studio system, they weren’t from any system at all. They weren’t strident revolutionaries who came from nowhere: both were enormously successful in Korea prior to their international breakthroughs, and both know how the game is played, so to speak. You saw people talking about how ironic it was that the Oscars crowd was applauding Parasite, as though Bong was calling for them all to be guillotined when he really wasn’t. Same goes here, although this is considerably more gauche.
Oh, oh, I hope they’ll make sure to get the most down on their luck and in debt people possible so it’s all the worse when they lose!God, talk about missing the fucking point.
Fear Factor + Big Brother + Survivor
456 contestats. Not 450. It says so in the quote later in the piece. Which then is the same series of numbers as $4.56 million.
To paraphrase from Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism:Anti-capitalism is widely disseminated within capitalism. This type of media expresses what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the media performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity.
The operations of capital do not depend on any subjectively assumed
belief or explicit case of propaganda, rather it persists in an
overvaluation of inner belief vs. projected belief. “So long as we
believe, in our hearts, that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue
to participate in it”.The co-option of anti-capitalist media by capital is the system working as intended.