‘Squid Game’ Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk Says He Lost “Eight Or Nine” Teeth Shooting Netflix’s South Korean Mega-Hit

deadline.com:

Playing Squid Game can be fatal, and it making sounds almost as dangerous — at least for your teeth. The creator of Netflix‘s South Korean hit series, Hwang Dong-hyuk, laughed as told the BBC he had lost “eight or nine” teeth due to the stress of making Season 1.

It had previously been reported he’d lost six. That might make you wonder why he’s returned to make more. Hwang revealed from the set of Season 2 that like desperate players in Squid Game compete in literal life-or-death competitions adapted from children’s games to win a huge cash prizes, money was the motivating factor that brought him back for a second run.

Hwang has often talked about how the license fee Netflix paid for his show, which he had been trying to make for more than a decade before it received a greenlight, cut him out of the huge back-end revenues Squid Game made when it unexpected blew up top become the streamer’s biggest hit in 2021. “Even though the first series was such a huge global success, honestly, I didn’t make much,” he told the BBC. “So doing the second series will help compensate me for the success of the first one too.

And I didn’t fully finish the story.” Compensation has been a major topic of discussion in Korea, which has become one of Netflix’s main international priorities thanks to the creative rush coming from the country.