Netflix's Reed Hastings says he expects the company's next Squid Game to also be a surprise

Deadline

“There’s got to be other amazing ones like that that even (co-CEO) Ted (Sarandos) or I don’t yet know about that are digesting in the Netflix content engine,” he said Tuesday while wearing a Squid Game tracksuit during Netflix's earnings call. Sarandos added that his team picked up Squid Game a couple of years ago after writer/director Hwang Dong-hyuk had been trying to make it for around ten years, and the Korean team thought it would be a local success. “They thought it’d be one of their biggest titles this year. I can’t say we had the same eyeball on it to tell you that it’d be our biggest title in our history around the world,” he added. “How something can go viral is really hard to predict but it’s super powerful when it happens. The show has to deliver the goods to deliver that much viewing and to have people talking about it, in such shorthand that it can be spoofed on SNL. It’s hard to predict, sometimes you think you’ve got lightning in a bottle and you’re wrong and sometimes you’ve got a great Korean show that turns out to be lightning in a bottle for the world.” Sarandos wasn’t asked whether there were any firm plans for a second season, although Dong-hyuk has talked up his interest in writing another story.

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• Squid Game star Lee Jung-jae urges the show's critics to rewatch the series, says he's been watching reaction videos online: "I have seen some reactions on social media and on YouTube, and I have been trying to wrap my mind around them. I watched a lot of YouTube reaction videos, videos of the viewers themselves watching Squid Game in real time," he says. "I had never seen these so-called reaction videos before in my life. I find that very interesting and funny. So yes, I have kept an eye on how the global audience is reacting." As for Squid Game's critics, Lee says: "For those viewers who found the series a little less interesting, I would like to recommend that they watch it again, because Squid Game is not really a show about survival games. It’s about people. I think we pose questions to ourselves as we watch the show: Have I been forgetting anything that I should never lose sight of, as a human being? Was there anybody who needed my help, but I was unaware of them? Should I have helped them? I think if they rewatch the series, the audience will be able to notice more of these subtle elements."
• Squid Game, released on Sept. 17, didn't appear to move the needle among U.S. subscribers for the last two weeks of last quarter
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