Korean drama video game maker
We had to take out loans – my mother, myself and my grandmother.” There was a film I was working on but we failed to get finance. “I was very financially straitened because my mother retired from the company she was working for. The idea for Squid Game came out of Hwang’s own family situation in 2009, after the global financial crisis that hit his homeland hard. I kept having new ideas and revising the episodes as we were filming so the amount of work multiplied.” “It was physically, mentally and emotionally draining. Perhaps Hwang should have negotiated a performance-related clause, particularly as creating, writing and directing it caused him so much stress that he lost six teeth in the process.
KOREAN DRAMA VIDEO GAME MAKER SERIES
The series – which Netflix estimates has been watched by 142m households and boosted its subscriber figures by 4.4m – is thought to be worth £650m to the streaming service. Its return on that has been extraordinary. According to leaked documents, the nine-episode run cost £15.5m to produce, which works out at £1.75m per instalment. Squid Game earlier this month overtook Bridgerton as the most successful Netflix show ever. After all, the 50-year-old South Korean film-maker has made hundreds of millions for his paymasters. Netflix paid me according to the original contract.” That seems unfair. And it’s not like Netflix is paying me a bonus. Perhaps Hwang is now as rich as the contestant who wins the top prize? “I’m not that rich,” he says. Win and they go home with 4.6bn won (£28m). In the dystopian survival drama, a mysterious organisation challenges 456 players from all walks of life – each deeply in debt – to play a series of children’s games.
I’ve just asked the creator of Squid Game, Netflix’s smash hit show, if its astonishing success has made him rich. H wang Dong-hyuk is laughing at me from his office in Seoul.