Inside ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’: How It Takes Inspiration From the Scripted K-Drama
Preview
There are 456 people in green uniforms — identical except for the individual number each wears — huddled in an enclosed dirt field. In the distance, the figure of a large mechanical girl announces that they’ll all be playing the children’s game red light, green light. The girl will spin to face away, and a singing voice will start, signaling the competitors can run; when she stops singing and spins back, everyone must immediately freeze. “Otherwise,” the girl’s voice declares, “you will be eliminated.”
For fans of Squid Game, one of the most popular series across the world, the setting looks frighteningly familiar. But have no fear: This is Episode 1 of Squid Game: The Challenge, a fascinating tactical and decidedly not fatal 10-episode reality competition version of the 2021 Korean drama series. So, when the singing stops and one player can’t keep from moving, she isn’t killed by sniper fire as characters on Squid Game were; instead, a black splotch of paint appears at the top of her shirt. She blinks and slowly falls to the ground, among the first of many to be eliminated during this game. The other players? They’ve lived — to perhaps dye another day.
(Credit: Netflix)
Why endure it all, barely eating, plus sleeping in quarters that match the several-tiered multiple bunk bed barracks from the series? For the chance to be the last person standing and to win $4.56 million. As one gamer announces, “People will do a whole lot worse for a whole lot less.”
Plenty of Tension
Inspired by Hwang Dong-hyuk’s K-drama from two years ago that grew into a vast global phenomenon, The Challenge has the stress, scheming, and head games of Squid Games, without the red-blooded worry. “We wanted it to be quick, we wanted it to be visual,” executive producer Tim Harcourt says of the dye packs that explode on players’ shirts. “It needed to soak through so that the audience could see it. It needed to be big enough so that the person wearing it could feel it.”
(Credit: Netflix)
The playground games of the original series — including “dalgona,” where you must use a pin to carve a circle, triangle, star, or umbrella shape out of a flat cookie; and walking on glass tiles suspended in the air — are the inspiration for most of this show’s challenges, but they’re also keeping things fresh. “There are a few new games coming up that lean into the spirit of the series,” Harcourt says.
Also included are what he calls “pregames,” strategic plays where “people do something they think doesn’t have a consequence, but it turns out [it does].”
Filming took place for three weeks in the U.K. between January and February. It followed an extensive audition process that Harcourt calls “a huge undertaking. We’re used to a reality cast of between 10 and 20 players.” While the cast is predominantly American, hundreds of thousands of applications came in from around the world. This may be the first Challenge, but if it succeeds, you might see more in a franchise, set in different locales.
As in other competitions, the focus shifts among several players, interviewed between games. They include a pair with a prior relationship (not unlike the original show), a “delightfully eccentric” septuagenarian doctor, an ex-basketball player turned coach, a British naval weapons officer, and two really strong mothers who, Harcourt says, “become great friends.” But when money is at stake, newfound bonds can take you only so far. On Squid Game: The Challenge, mother may not always know best.
Squid Game: The Challenge, Series Premiere, Wednesday, November 22, Netflix (New Episodes Weekly)
This is an abbreviated version of the Squid Game: The Challenge cover story from TV Insider’s November issue. For more in-depth, reported coverage devoted to streaming shows from the publishers of TV Guide Magazine, pick up the issue, currently on newsstands, or purchase it online here. You can also subscribe to TV Insider Magazine here now.
