'' SQUID GAME '' SQUAT : NETFLIX'S BIGGEST

'Squid Game' set to become Netflix's biggest show ever. This Korean survival drama to dethrone streaming giant's previous non-English language hits.

Squid Game, Netflix's new Korean survival drama, may become the global streaming entertainment giant's most successful original content ever, its chief has said according to Deadline.

''Squid Game will definitely be our biggest non-English language show in the world, for sure, ''Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said during Code 2021, an annual technology conference hosted in Beverly Hills, California, by American media company VOX Media.

''It's only been out for nine days, and it's a very good chance it's going to be our biggest show ever. It's enormously popular,'' he added.

He noted that Squid Game is blowing past all of Netflix's previous non-English language hits, including the Spanish crime thriller Money Heist [La Casa de Papel] and the French mystery series Lupin.

The none-part thriller, written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, revolves around a group of people taking part in a series of deadly games to win 45.6 billion [ $38.6 million] in prize money.

Just a few days after its official release on September 17, it entered the top 10 on the world's popular TV show rankings offered by streaming analytics firm FlixPatrol.

It has remained on top of the chart for about 10 days. Also, it became the first South Korean show to hit No. 1 on Netflix's top 10 TV show list in the United States.

South Korean Internet service provider SK Broadband has sued Netflix to pay the costs from increased network traffic and maintenance work because of a surge of viewers to the US firm's content, an SK spokesperson said on Friday.

The move comes after a Seoul court said Netflix should ''reasonably'' give something in return to the internet service provider for network usage and multiple South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage, despite generating explosive traffic. 

Netflix said it will review SK Broadband's claim, and seek the dialogue and explain ways in the meantime to work with SK Broadband to ensure customers are not affected.

The popularity of the hit series Squid Game and other offerings have underscored Netflix's status as the country's second-largest data traffic generator after Google's YouTube, but the two are the only ones to not pay network usage fees, which other content providers such as Amazon, Apple and facebook are paying, SK said.

The streaming giant's data traffic handled by the SK jumped 24 times from May 2018 to 1.2 trillion bits of data processed per second as of September, SK said, riding on the success of several Netflix productions from Korea including Squid Game and DP.

SK Broadband said it lodged a lawsuit against Netflix for it to pay for using SK's networks since Netflix began using SK's dedicated line starting 2018 to deliver increasingly larger amounts of data-heavy, high definition video content to viewers in Korea from servers in Japan and Hong Kong.

The World Students Society thanks News Desk : The Express Tribune.