Netflix has just released the first full-length trailer and first images of its upcoming real-life game show, Squid Game: The Challenge and, with a truly life-changing sum of money to be won, it promises to be one fraught watch.
Squid Game set the world on fire: the Korean Netflix TV show, which depicted a series of debt-riddled contestants literally fighting it to the death, became Netflix's most-viewed show of all time in autumn 2021 – a position it still holds today – with 265.2 million viewers.
Not only was the series utterly gripping, but it drilled down on selfishness and greed, asking questions about how far human beings are willing to go to get what they want. "Universally engaging themes of wealth inequality, capitalism, honour, justice, and survival offer compelling reasons to keep watching well beyond bedtime," said the Standard.
Now Netflix is releasing a real-life version, where contestants face a series of near-identical challenges to the series, to try and win a life-changing sum of money. Obviously, the stakes are slightly lower: no one risks losing their life if they lose a task. But contestants have the possibility of winning a whopping $4.56 million – an amount that's so large that it is prone to bring out the worst in people.
The show will see 456 players "pushed to their limits and forced to ask themselves just how far they’ll go to win" said Netflix.
This afternoon the streamer released the game show's first trailer and several first-look images – and by all accounts it looks like it's going to be an absolutely hardcore competition. In an almost perfect recreation of the TV show's set, hundreds of contestants stand in green tracksuits in a room lined with bunkbeds. Faceless men in pink suits order about the freaked-out competitors who face adapted versions of Squid Games' now famous challenges.
The trailer shows glimpses of a giant-sized Younghee, the killer "red light, green light" girl who wipes out half the cast; there a scenes of the marble game, contestants fighting over a meal, people joining forces and scheming. "You can't trust anybody in here," says the voice of one of the candidates over the montage. "We're in Squid Game, let's get real," says another. "People's true colours are starting to come out," says a third woman, speaking to the camera, looking slightly concerned.
The trailer shows dancing, whooping, screaming, people being shot with paint, plotting and more plotting, “This is hell. What are the rules in hell?” said Deok-su in the series; Squid Game: The Challenge will transport audiences back to this suffocating atmosphere.
See more first look images below:
