So I spent a lot of time killing time in comic book cafes, reading. So that actually put me into a really difficult financial situation - I was broke. So back in 2008, I had a script that I had written, which I was running around with trying to get investment, but it didn’t work out and it wasn’t made into a movie. What was the very beginning of Squid Game‘s creation? How did the concept come to you?
#A mess o trouble generator series
The Hollywood Reporter connected with Hwang this week via Zoom from Seoul to talk about the painful personal origins of Squid Game‘s concept, his thoughts on the story’s deeper meanings and where he’d like to take his blockbuster series next (spoilers ahead). The ongoing global fascination with the show is minting fortunes and making mega-stars of the cast, such as fan favorite Jung, a model turned actress who has seen her Instagram following grow from a few hundred thousand several weeks ago to nearly 20 million and counting today.
Starring Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-jun, Jung Ho-yeon and several other established Korean names and newcomers, Squid Game follows a group of social outcasts who are lured by a mysterious organization into playing children’s games for a cash prize - with deadly high stakes. Netflix stepped in with the green light in 2018, and the rest is now history. The director famously wrote the initial script for Squid Game - then envisioned as a feature film - in 2009, whereupon it was roundly rejected by Korean studios as altogether too violent and conceptually improbable. So, it’s perhaps less surprising than it might initially seem that Hwang executed Squid Game‘s candy-colored, high-concept dystopian material with such hit-making aplomb. And for his most recent feature effort, The Fortress (2017), Hwang again jumped in an entirely different direction, mounting a grand period drama set during the Second Manchu invasion of Korea in 1636 - yet another critical and commercial winner. Another hit, the film was later remade by producer CJ Entertainment in more than a half dozen other countries and languages. His next feature, Miss Granny (2014), could scarcely have been more different: A lighthearted comedy, the film follows a woman in her 70s who magically finds herself in the body of her 20-year-old self.
The film became both a box office sensation and a catalyst for fervent social activism, eventually resulting in local lawmakers passing a bill that eliminated Korea’s statute of limitations for sex crimes against minors and the disabled.
The film explored real-life incidents at South Korea’s Gwangju Inhwa School for the deaf, where young students were sexually abused by their teachers in the early 2000s. Hwang’s second feature, Silenced, from 2011, gave him his first taste of viral attention. 'Squid Game' Cast Talks Show's Success, Origin of Robot Doll on 'Tonight Show'
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