Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator of Netflix’s massively popular “Squid Game,” revealed Tuesday that not only is he in talks with the streaming platform to create a second season of the smash hit, but a third, too.
“I’m in talks with Netflix over season two as well as season three,” he said in an interview with Korea’s KBS, per the Korea Times. “We will come to a conclusion any time soon.”
Dong-hyuk confirmed in November that there will be a second season of the show, telling the Associated Press, “So, there’s been so much pressure, so much demand and so much love for a second season, so I almost feel like you leave us no choice. But I will say there will indeed be a second season. It’s in my head right now. I’m in the planning process currently but I do think it’s too early to say when and how it’s going to happen.”
The first season of “Squid Game” follows 456 desperate contestants, including Lee Jung-jae’s Seong Gi-hun and Park Hae-soo’s Cho Sang-woo, as they compete in a mysterious and deadly survival game involving multiple rounds of childhood games. The contestants are all in debt or some kind of personal financial crisis and are playing to win ₩45.6 billion, which is over $38 million in American currency. Their deadly face-offs are broadcast for wealthy viewers, who pay to watch their struggling countrymen fight to the death in games of “red light, green light” or marbles.
In the November interview with the Associated Press, Dong-hyuk promised “Gi-hun will come back. He’ll do something for the world.”
The nine-episode first season of “Squid Game,” which launched Sept. 17, quickly became a word-of-mouth hit, drawing in big-name fans like LeBron James. Netflix said two-thirds of households that have the streaming service sampled the first season within its first four weeks. In other words, 142 million of Nielsen’s 214 million households watched at least two minutes of any “Squid Game” episode within the first 28 days of its availability.