Why the original ‘Squid Game’ pitch was turned down by every producer in Korea
On September 17, 2021, the first season of Squid Game was released on Netflix, and to the surprise of everyone involved, it became a genuine cultural phenomenon. In fact, it quickly became the most-watched show in the streaming giant’s history and won six Emmy Awards. Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk was especially shocked by his show’s unparalleled success, though, because he had previously been turned down by every major studio in South Korea when he pitched the idea a decade earlier. He had originally envisioned the satirical survival drama as a movie, which would have told the story of a twisted contest in which debt-ridden citizens played a series of deadly children’s games within a standard two-hour timeframe. Instead, producers shot down his idea – before the world finally caught up to his vision.
In 2008, Hwang was a young, struggling filmmaker trying to make his way in the Korean film industry. He had made several short films and written a script for a feature that he was desperate to secure funding for. Sadly, he was unsuccessful, and due to the mounting debt crisis in his native land, he had to take out loans to keep his head above water – as did his mother and grandmother.
Feeling at a loose end, he spent most of his free time in comic book cafes known in Korea as ‘manhwabang.’ This is where he immersed himself in Japanese Manga titles like Battle Royale, Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji, and Liar Game, resonating strongly with him as someone experiencing severe financial hardship. In 2021, he told The Hollywood Reporter, “I read some stories about these indebted people entering into these life-and-death games, and that became really immersive for me because I was struggling financially myself. I was even thinking that I would love to join a game like that, if it existed, to make a bunch of cash and get out of this terrible situation.”
After wallowing in his predicament for a while, though, a notion finally clicked in Hwang’s head: “Well, I’m a director. Why don’t I just make a movie with this kind of storyline?” He set about writing a film script about a survival game that he would make quintessentially Korean, as opposed to the Japanese examples he had been reading. Throughout 2009, he put the script together, and a razor-sharp allegory about modern capitalistic society emerged. He decided that the games the characters played would be the same games he played as a child, as that kind of simplicity would allow audiences to “focus on the characters, rather than being distracted by trying to interpret the rules.”
Once again, Hwang took his script to every producer and studio he could think of – and once again, he was turned down by every one of them. He told The Chosunilbo, “I was told I couldn’t make it because it was too difficult to understand and bizarre.” Producers reacted negatively to his tale of desperate people being lured by shadowy forces into killing each other for money, telling him it was too grotesque and, even worse than that, too far-fetched.
At this point, Hwang put Squid Game in a drawer and worked on other things. He directed three hugely successful films, and by the time Netflix opened an office in Seoul in 2018 and announced a $500 million investment in Korean content, he was an established name. The streaming giant was specifically working toward a landscape where the next Stranger Things-level hit could emanate from outside Hollywood, and when it got a hold of Hwang’s script, it fit the bill perfectly. The only proviso was that it was to be a television show instead of a movie.
Ultimately, though, Squid Game was a much easier sell a decade after Hwang first tried to get it off the ground for one simple reason: the world had changed so significantly that his biting, ultraviolent satire suddenly didn’t seem a million miles away from reality. He mused, “It’s a bit of a sad story, but 10 years later, the world has become a world where this kind of ridiculous survival story fits well. When I was making it now, people were like, ‘This is fun. It’s realistic.'” He added, “If you look at it, everyone plays games these days. I think that Bitcoin, real estate, and stocks are all games that are played with the aim of getting rich. I think that’s why everyone in the world is interested.”