Director Hwang Dong-hyuk: "We All Live In A Squid Game"

The plot of the dystopia "The Squid Game" is that a mysterious organization invites 456 men and women from different walks of life, but equally mired in debt, to play a game. Whoever wins will return home with 4.6 billion won (2 billion 750 million rubles at the exchange rate). Whoever loses will get a bullet in the head.

The 50-year-old South Korean screenwriter and director Hwang Dong-hyuk , who came up with the idea, wrote the script and directed the series from start to finish, says that the work did not bring him billions, although the show has become unprecedentedly popular around the world. “I have enough money to put on the table. But Netflix didn't pay me any bonuses. Everything was in line with the original contract. " At the same time, work on the series, the director admits, cost him stress, from which he lost six teeth: “It was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting. I kept coming up with new ideas and rewriting the script while filming, so the workload increased. "

Hwan came up with the idea in 2009 after the global financial crisis affected his own life: “I was very short of money. Then I was working on one film, but I could not get funding, so I sat idle for about a year. We had to take loans - to my mother, me and my grandmother. " At the time, Hwang consoled himself with the comics: “I read Battle Royale and other comic books about survival games, and like no one understood the characters who were desperate for money and success. It was the most difficult moment in my life. I thought: if such a survival game existed in reality, would I join it to earn money for my family? So I started writing the script. "

Hwang says the brutality of the squid game reflects the reality that humans have to struggle to live in very unequal circumstances: “I really believe that the overall global economic order is unfair, and 90% of people think the same way. For example, during a pandemic, poorer countries cannot vaccinate people, they become infected and die. Therefore, I tried to convey the idea of modern capitalism. It's pretty simple. "

Hwang admits that he hasn't seen too much in the series: "There are only two that I watched to the end -" Breaking Bad "and" Mindhunter. " I was told the Bridgertons were good, so I tried to watch the first episode but gave up in the middle. I'm not really into TV romance stories. Six or seven years have passed since I had a relationship myself, so it's pretty difficult for me. "

There is sex in the series, but it was filmed rather darkly. “This is a different kind of love - in a situation of despair. The woman relies on the strongest man in the group. She must find something to rely on. She believes that this is love. It would be too sad to sell sex just to survive. Therefore, she believes that her emotion is love, but not romantic love, as in the Bridgertons.

One of the participants in the game is a North Korean defector. “They are now the largest minority in South Korea,” says Hwang. - And there will only be more of them. The exchange between the two Koreas will expand. At some point, we will achieve reunification. I hope so". However, the show is not just a portrait of South Korea alone: "We all live in a world of squid games."

Not everyone liked the finale of the show. But it has its own plus - it is perfect for a sequel, although so far there have been no announcements. “Of course there is talk. This is inevitable because such a success has happened. I’m thinking about it, and I’ve already got some of it, but I don’t want to do it right now. I have another idea that I really want to make a film on. I'm going to talk to Netflix about it. "

The director himself does not want to become a member of the Squid Game. So he is in talks with Netflix in an effort to get three films he has directed over the past decade to air. But he is not going to give up filming the continuation either: "It is quite possible that I will have to go through the second season to become as rich as the winner of the game."