Squid Games has managed to grab the whole world’s attention, or so it seems. The new Korean drama series has taken the world by storm, and in doing so earned Netflix some serious potential to break standing records. Brandon Blake, the entertainment lawyer , lets us in on new developments.
There was a point in time where no one would believe that a non-English language series or feature could top a U.S-based streamer’s most-watched list. Yet, as Parasite proved before it, the increasingly global marketplace wants good stories and captivating storytelling and doesn’t really care where it comes from anymore. Squid Games has taken the network by storm, shooting to the top of ‘most popular lists in over 90 countries within the first 10 days, a record in itself. It’s the first Korean original series to ever do so.
This surpassed Lupin’s record of 76 million households watching at least two minutes in the first four weeks of release. But let’s face it, a 2-minute “view” has a lot more to do with marketing and where the link content is placed on the page than it does with how many people actually watched the whole episode, much less the whole series.
Currently, it’s well on track to become the biggest non-English-language hit the network has had. It’s even well on the way to break the Bridgeton record for the highest viewership of any language globally. Fan engagement grew by 981% in the first week alone. Most surprising of all? It’s done more or less on word of mouth. No flashy ad campaigns were used here, except of course on page promotion by Netflix itself.
Netflix has poured $500M into developing South Korean properties, and it is a movie that’s clearly paying off. To have a non-English-language property make serious moves to become their best performing series ever is an unprecedented shift in how the Western world views non-English series, too. Stats suggest over 97% of US Netflix viewers have engaged with a non-English property in the last year, with overall non-English viewing jumping 71% from 2019. Korea leads the pack here, with a 200% viewership jump.
Will this be the start of a newer, broader slate of standard programming? While that remains to be seen, one thing is for certain- Netflix has a record-breaking winner on its hands here.
