‘Squid Game’ Reality Show Drops First Trailer: ‘This Is a Savage Game’

Let the games begin. After Squid Game premiered on Netflix in 2021, it quickly became one of the streaming giant’s biggest shows thanks to the bizarre yet captivating premise of having 456 players compete for a multi-million dollar prize in a series of deadly games. Now, Netflix is turning the scripted series into a real-life (but much less deadly) reality show called Squid Game: The Challenge. And judging from its first trailer, it looks as bonkers as it sounds.

The trailer opens with a familiar setting: an empty warehouse-type room filled with bunk beds. “Attention all players, it is now time for the next game. Please enter the game hall immediately,” a voiceover is heard instructing the contestants. The trailer offers a glimpse of the first challenge, which is a direct replica of the show’s “Red Light, Green Light” game.

“This is a savage game,” one contestant notes.

While it appears that players form teams and may be initially friendly, they’re also there to win, and trusting others proves potentially fatal when directives include picking two players to eliminate. “This game has to be played with strategy,” another player says. A competitor also warns: “I’m gonna be your best friend, but I will absolutely double-cross you.”

It sounds and appears to be a brutal competition in the clip, and as Rolling Stone reported, former contestants claimed the experience was “cruel,” “rigged,” and conducted under inhumane conditions. “It was just the cruelest, meanest thing I’ve ever been through,” one former contestant said. “We were a human horse race, and they were treating us like horses out in the cold racing and [the race] was fixed.”

Despite the claims, Netflix  and co-producing studios The Garden and Studio Lambert denied allegations that the game was fixed in a joint statement, saying, “Any suggestion that the competition is rigged or claims of serious harm to players are simply untrue.”

“We’ve taken all the appropriate safety precautions, including after care for contestants – and an independent adjudicator is overseeing each game to ensure it’s fair to everyone,” the statement added.

From Rolling Stone US.