Dissecting The Success Of “Squid Game”

A new feature piece at Vulture has gone into the surprise success of Netflix’s addictive and entertaining South Korean dystopian thriller meets social satire series “Squid Game”.

Netflix has had something of a knack for making global hits out of subtitled dramas like “Dark,” “Elite” and most famously “Money Heist” (La Casa de Papel). The success of “Squid Game” however is looking to dwarf not just them but the streamer’s biggest English-language hits too like “Bridgerton” and “The Witcher”.

The nine-episode series follows a small group of characters among several hundred financially challenged people forced to compete in a series of lethal children’s games for survival and a large cash prize. The show launched two weeks ago on the service and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said this past week the show is on track to become the platform’s most sampled original-series launch ever.

While no numbers have been given in terms of viewership yet, the series has risen to be the No. 1 show on the streamer’s popularity charts in 90 countries including the United States. Third-party firm Parrot Analytics, which looks at everything from online chatter to illegal downloads, says the series is now the most in-demand show in the world with 79x the audience interest compared to the average title.

Also interesting is the buzz is coming almost entirely organic, spreading via word of mouth and audience-generated interest as advance sceeeners weren’t widely distributed and the title was barely marketed outside Asia. It is even more impressive considering it isn’t based on any existing IP. Netflix’s global TV head Bela Bajaria tells the outlet: “We always knew it was going to be a signature title for Korea, but there’s no way to have anticipated it would be this big.”

The series has also opened up the age old discussion of dubs vs. subs by including not just the original Korean language track with English subtitles, but an English-language track with heavily American-accented dubbing that’s laughably bad. The subtitles themselves have come under fire from some camps for missing some of the nuance of the original language.

Still, Bajaria says streaming of all non-English content amongst the American audience of the platform is up 71% since 2019 showing that even the most subtitle-averse western audiences are developing an appetite for different stories.

Back in 2018 Sarandos told the outlet he’d be excited if “the next Stranger Things came from outside America,” hoping for something with that scale of success to come out of somewhere that isn’t Hollywood. He may have gotten his wish.

As for a possible second season, nothing has been decided yet but Bajaria says it’ll likey depend on creator/director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s schedule: “we’re trying to figure out the right structure for him.”

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