No matter nervousness you felt watching folks get killed for not licking a cookie quick sufficient or standing nonetheless for lengthy sufficient within the first season of Netflix’s Squid Recreation is nothing in comparison with what collection creator Hwang Dong-hyuk felt whereas making it. Based on the acclaimed South Korean director, the stress of constructing the present made his physique break down within the strangest methods.
In an intensive interview with the BBC from the set of Squid Recreation’s second season, Dong-hyuk reveals he was so confused making the primary season that he misplaced “eight or 9 tooth.” What makes issues worse is that was simply the beginning. He later acknowledged that he’s felt much more stress whereas making the second season. A part of that stress stems from real-life issues plaguing society, which the present is predicated round.
Centered on the destitute but decided Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) coming into a mysterious competitors to alter his fortune, Squid Recreation examines the deleterious results of financial disparities is Korean societies. Within the first season, the sport is paused after many of the gamers ask to go away following the horrific “Crimson Mild, Inexperienced Mild” recreation that was their introduction to the life-or-death stakes of the competitors. After the gamers return to the monetary ruins of their actuality, the overwhelming majority resolve to return to the sport, underscoring how hopelessness in a single’s present life that might encourage them to place their life on the road for an opportunity at one thing higher. Channeling that dread right into a tv present would undoubtedly be sufficient to drive me mad.
Now, nonetheless, he’s making the second season and, if something, he’s discovering it much more nerve-racking. Although he admits that his lack of enough compensation for the primary season, which reportedly made Netflix $900 million, was the central catalyst for him making the second season, he does level to the way it all was a present and a curse. “I’ve about two nightmares per week, often about one thing going improper throughout capturing or folks saying that it’s not good,” Dong-hyuk tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Will the video games be as entertaining as in season one? Are the characters as charming?”
Hopefully, after the brand new season of Squid Recreation releases on Netflix on December 26, Dong-hyuk will get some peaceable sleep and some huge cash, together with retaining the remainder of his tooth intact.