Hwang created, wrote, directed and produced the nine-part series. It reached more than 142 million Netflix households and has been streamed for more than 1.6 billion hours.
The series tells the story of a mysterious game that focused on 456 contestants, all of which were in difficult financial situations. They were locked inside a secret facility and forced to play a series of traditional Korean children games such as "Red Light, Green Light" and pulling a rope. The winner would win 45.6 billion Won. Those who lose would die a horrible death.
Netflix has confirmed that #SquidGame will return for Season 2! “The Squid Game universe has just begun,” they said. (Via: x-on:Variety) pic.twitter.com/d3hsis3GOH
— Netflix Updates (x-on:NetflxUpdates) January 20, 2022
The official renewal came in the same week that saw Netflix announce that it is going to create 25 South-Korean series. Sarandos admitted that the Oscar success of Parasite was a turning point for the Korean drama genre.
He praised the local team of the streamer for the success of Squid Game.
“They didn’t try to make the show different so that it would travel, but tried to find all the things about Korean cinema and Korean drama and build them up in a way and new levels of production values,” he said. “It’s not like we had to go in and teach anyone in Korea how to make great content. It’s an incredible market for that. There’s always been curiosity around the world, [the] K Drama market has always had pockets of success all over the place, but the ease of delivery that we’ve offered has pushed that into the mainstream.”