Yahoo Finance Netflix’s Mega-Hit ‘Squid Game’ Will Generate Almost $900 Million In Value
Netflix projects the Korean-language megahit Squid Game will create almost $900 million dollars in value.
In a confidential document reviewed by Bloomberg News, Squid Game generated $891.1 million in impact value, Netflix’s proprietary metric describing the measure of a title’s economic contribution based on subscriber viewing.
More from Deadline
The nine-episode Netflix original series follows debt-laden contestants in a life-or-death competition to win a grand prize of $38.5 million dollars. Following its debut on September 17th, the survival drama has become Netflix’s most-watched series ever, amassing 111 million viewers in its first month.
The series, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, was surprisingly cost-efficient to make.
According to the internal document, figures estimate the show cost Netflix $21.4 million to produce, about $2.4 million per episode. That would make the nine-episode run cheaper in cost than The Closer, the recent controversial Dave Chappelle comedy special, or couple episodes of The Crown.
In the report, Netflix also revealed a newer total viewer figure, reporting 132 million people watched at least two minutes of Squid Game in the first 23 days, obliterating the previously held record by the period romance Bridgerton. 89% of viewers who started Squid Game, approximately 117 million viewers, watched at least 75 minutes and 66%, 87 million viewers, finished the show within the 23 day window after its release. In sum, viewers have consumed more than 1.4 billion hours of the dystopian thriller (for reference: the average human life clocks in about 635,000 hours).
In slight contrast, Nielsen recently reported the Korean thriller starring Lee Jung-jae got a slow start in U.S. In the measurement firm’s streaming rankings for the week of September 13 to 19, the South Korean blockbuster failed to crack the top 10 original shows, racking up 206 million minutes of viewing. This metric could suggest how little American viewing had to do with the show’s early traction, a series that quickly reached No. 1 on Netflix in 90 countries.
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
