Squid Game: The Challenge Renewed for Season 2 on Netflix
The reality show inspired by Netflix’s mega-hit K-drama Squid Game has been renewed for a second season following its hugely successful release on the streaming platform. The show debuted on November 22 and has reached the top spot on Netflix’s Top 10 English TV list, and hit the Top 10 list in 93 countries overall.
The reality series has been a huge success for Netflix
The show is based on Netflix’s popular K-drama Squid Game, which follows a group of people who are in such desperately difficult monetary situations they sign up to a life-or-death game show in which they must fight to survive and win the £4.56 million reward. Adapted into a reality TV show, Squid Game: The Challenge sees 456 real people enter the competition to try and win $4.56 million by taking part in games that are inspired by the original series, though they are not required to fight to death as often happens in the K-drama.
The first season of Squid Game: The Challenge is set to end with a grand finale on December 7, in which the final three players will face each other in one last game before the winner is revealed. Netflix were keen to make the renewal announcement ahead of the finale’s release, with Brandon Riegg, Netflix VP of Nonfiction Series saying in a statement: “There was no red light in our decision to greenlight season two of Squid Game: The Challenge, the most ambitious unscripted show we’ve premiered at Netflix.”
The post-apocalyptic world of Fallout
In other news, Prime Video’s Fallout series has started production, with a star-studded cast including Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Aaron Moten. The show is based on the popular video game series, which started as a role-playing computer game in 1997 and has since become a sprawling, open-world series. The TV show’s stars had varying degrees of video game knowledge, with Goggins having “zero” gaming experience, but learning about Fallout through his 13-year-old son. Moten watched Fallout playthroughs on Twitch, but Purnell encountered some difficulty.
“I’m not a gamer, but I tried to play Fallout,” she says. “I’m just not good at it, and that annoys me because I’m competitive. It was the controls that I didn’t get the hang of. My thumbs don’t control the right way.”
To recreate the desolate, post-nuclear wasteland of Fallout, the cast, Nolan, and showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner traveled to New York, New Jersey, Utah, and the Skeleton Coast in Namibia to shoot. They faced some truly apocalyptic weather conditions.
“It was an incredible experience, but exhausting at the end of every day. It was fucking hot,” says Goggins, who plays an undead, prosthetic-heavy bounty hunter named The Ghoul. “The very first day I put [the costume] on in New York, I think the heat index was like 104 or 105, and we went down and started shooting. At one point, Jonah looked over at me said, ‘I know it’s an emotional scene, but are you crying?’ I said, ‘No, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He reached up and poked my eye and water just came gushing out underneath this prosthetic.”
The cast of Squid Game: The Challenge
Meanwhile, Netflix is ramping up local production in Southeast Asia, aiming to boost its subscriber base in the region even as U.S. rivals are pulling back. The world’s largest streaming TV service is increasing the number of titles available and the number of shows it produces in the region in an effort to reach more viewers, Minyoung Kim, vice president of content for Asia excluding India, said at a company event in Jakarta.
“It is on us to make sure that these stories find audiences not only within their home country but also beyond domestic markets, enabling audiences around the world to discover the stories that they will love,” Kim said.
