The gigantic success of Squid Game is said to have increased the value of Netflix by almost a billion US dollars. However, series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk became anything but rich from it.
Anyone who thought that a real game show based on the South Korean social criticism thriller Squid Game would be perverse to ironic has not yet heard the incredible story of series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk. After the first season, he had hardly benefited from the success of the sensational series, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, made Netflix worth almost an additional billion US dollars.
The reason: the series creator was paid a fixed price for the script with no participation in success or bonuses and had to cede all rights to Squid Game to Netflix. The fact that the format was relatively cheap to produce, is the most-watched series on the service with over 1.65 billion hours streamed, and won six Emmys, made no difference.
The Squid Game maker barely earned anything from the Netflix series, but lost several teeth
It was already known that Hwang did not get rich from Squid Game in 2021, before he was able to negotiate a hopefully better deal for Season 2. He tackled this work, among other things, to get some of the series’ success, because season 1 stressed him out so much at the time that he lost eight or nine teeth, according to the latest BBC report. That almost sounds like the dystopian survival game conditions created by the game masters of the Squid Games.
In an interview with the British news organization, the bruised creator of the most successful Netflix series of all time put it this way:
Although the first season was such a global success, I honestly didn’t make much money. The second season will also help to compensate me for the success of the first season.
And the brutal twist: working on the long-awaited follow-up season was said to be even more stressful. Not only because of the high expectations for the continuation of the story of Squid Game survivor Gi-Hun (Jung-Jae Lee), but also due to the political world climate and an ever-widening wealth gap. Very pessimistically, Hwang continues:
The stress I feel now is much greater. […] When I shot this season, I kept asking myself, ‘Do we humans have what it takes to keep the world from heading towards the abyss?’ Honestly, I don’t know.
In 2023, writers and creators in the beautiful new streaming world no longer adequately and consistently compensated for film and series work brought the entertainment industry to a standstill. The whole thing was called the Hollywood strike, in which actors finally joined to negotiate better conditions and security in the age of streaming and AI.
The situation is even more precarious for creatives outside of the U.S., who in most cases do not have a large lobby to protect them from exploitative strategies.
