Before Squid Game, There Was Battle Royale
Entertainment Movies & TV
In less than a week, the second season of Squid Game — a show about desperate people participating in deadly challenges for money — was viewed nearly 70 million times, becoming the most popular Netflix show in 92 countries . Part of Squid Game ’s success is doing something new with a tried-and-tested formula . But an equally important part is having that “lethal game” formula there in the first place, which was perfected and popularized by Battle Royale.
Originally a 1999 novel by Koushun Takami later turned into a manga and two movies about middle school students forced to kill each other by a fascist government, the Battle Royale franchise might be a quarter-of-a-century old, but it still remains the beloved standard for stories about people trapped in life-or-death games. Squid Game ’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk openly admits to taking inspiration from Battle Royale, the origin of which is actually as fascinating in places as the South Korean drama.
Some of the greatest stories ever started with a dream. Not a “dream” as in “an idea” but the little movie inside our heads we see while sleeping. James Cameron came up with the idea for The Terminator while having a fever-induced nightmare in Rome in 1981. As such, Takami is in a very exclusive club because he also got the idea for Battle Royale from a dream.
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