The author and director of Squid Game says he is turn out to be numb to the hyperviolence depicted within the present and would no longer delight in staring at its graphic scenes.

The first season of Hwang Dong-hyuk’s dystopian South Korean drama was a lockdown phenomenon, turning into the most-watched collection originate in Netflix history.

The fifty three-year-broken-down filmmaker went on to map Emmy history as the critical Asian to get outstanding directing for a drama collection.

Now, with the 2d season appropriate weeks away, Hwang tells Sky News: “For one of the vital vital scenes, love the save they’re harvesting organs within the critical season, I judge if I wasn’t the one organising it, I’d potentially quilt my eyes too.

“Nonetheless as a creator, I even need to visualize what I’ve created and written. I direct in a sense I’ve turn out to be a shrimp of numb to that, but I will snarl as an particular person, I’m no longer the form who can look these very graphic scenes with out suppose.”

In the beginning written as a movie script in 2008, Squid Game was turn out to be down by a few South Korean studios, sooner than being picked up by Netflix a decade later as section of its power to develop international programming.

It was demand the streamer, which now has 120 favorite Korean collection and movies below its belt.

The drama’s juxtaposition of innocent childhood games with brutal bloodshed and loss of life on a mass scale has proved both efficient and controversial in equal measure.

When the critical season came out in 2021, some faculties warned fogeys to no longer let their children look it after experiences of re-enactments in playgrounds leading to destroy and upset.

‘Much less violent than ethical crime’

Hwang himself has previously made certain that Squid Game was no longer made for children (within the UK, both seasons are rated 15, whereas in Korea they’re rated 19 and above) and has explicitly told against children staring at it.

Bringing Korean games alongside side Purple Mild, Green Mild, and the titular Squid Game to the attention of the sphere, or no longer it is likely the following season – which picks up three years after Player 456’s victory – will introduce a large number of fresh concepts to cull its contestants.

Hwang says: “The violence depicted on this collection is more allegorical, I strive to depict society’s violent concepts of treating the losers of rivals, no longer it being physical violence, however the map they power them to the backside of society, forcing them into poverty…

“Of us that are eliminated, so to keep up a correspondence, or of us that lose the rivals, they are headed for a lifestyles in grief, and I tried to right that.”

And he insists the present is less violent than ethical crime – a genre that exploded in reputation over lockdown too, and any other in which Netflix in particular excels.

“I created this collection looking for to portray that as instantaneous loss of life, on epic of or no longer it is within the produce of a sport. I nearly judge or no longer it is less violent than one of the vital vital violence depicted in other forms of recount, love ethical crime-basically basically based mostly collection.”

‘I’m higher off than sooner than’

With a focal point on wealth and social save, the present puts an right stamp on human lifestyles – 100 million South Korean received (£55.6m) is added to the prize pot following the loss of life of every contestant, with a doable enormous prize of forty five.6bn South Korean received (£25.4bn) at the climax of the games.

Meanwhile, Squid Game has earned Netflix a total bunch of thousands and thousands of kilos – leading Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos to allude to a future “Squid Game universe”.

Earlier this year, the streamer released a sport present adaptation, Squid Game: The Disaster providing the excellent single money prize ever in a television present (a $4.56m/£3.64m jackpot), and there are whispers of an English-language TV collection within the works too.

Nonetheless Hwang brushes off the advice the success of the present can include made him as prosperous as the neat-rich he satirizes.

“I’d very neatly be higher off than sooner than, but I salvage no longer judge it might perchance probably perchance bring me to that level of affect or wealth,” he says.

Whereas Hwang could perchance no longer be buying his non-public jet planes and yachts moderately yet, he hopes his takedown of folks that misuse their rude financial or political powers will beget a legacy of its non-public.

As his Squid Game universe continues to develop, Hwang says: “I’d love to be remembered as someone who gave meals for idea, who created an opportunity for folk to include more meaningful conversations about such issues”.

Squid Game season two is streaming on Netflix from Boxing Day, with the third and final season out subsequent year.