Squid Game season three breaks Netflix viewership record

The third season of the South Korean series Squid Game has become Netflix's most successful TV launch of all time.

In the first three days, the survival thriller earned over 60.1m views, breaking the viewership record of the streaming platform. Since the release on June 27, over 368.4 million hours of the show were viewed across the globe.

Additionally, the highly anticipated final season is already No. 9 on the most successful non-English-language shows. Seasons one and two currently hold the two top spots on that list.

Squid Game had its debut in September 2021 and is based on a South Korean kids’ game. The dystopian show centres on a group of contestants who have to compete to survive and win a large cash prize.

In a recent interview with Hot Press, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk shared the inspiration behind the acclaimed series' third season:

“Originally, I had only planned for the narrative to be a single season,” he said. “So I was only planning for season two, and in the process of writing, I had expected it to come to about eight episodes in total."

"But the story developed into a total of 12-13 episodes, so I felt it would be too long to put into a single season. As a result, we decided to split it into two," explained Hwang Dong-hyuk.

Although this is the final season of the South Korean TV program, there have been rumours regarding an expansion of the franchise. Director David Fincher (House of Cards) is supposedly working on an English remake of Squid Game for Netflix.

In 2023, the British reality spin-off Squid Game: The Challenge debuted, with a second season in the works.