Hi everyone, and thank you for joining us for a special live edition of the Hollywood

Reporters Awards Chatter Podcast.

I'm Scott Feinberg, the host and also a trustee professor at Chapman University's Dodge

College of Film and Media Arts, and we are recording this very special episode, the first

of the 2021-2022 ME season.

In front of several hundred members of the Chapman community, here at the University's

Palino Theatre, on this podcast, I'm usually joined by one guest, but for this episode,

I'm about to be joined by five guests, all of whom are visiting the United States from

their homes in South Korea and who are at this moment among the most famous people in

the world thanks to their involvement with Squid Game, a nine episode Korean language

dystopian drama about financially strapped Koreans who enter a competition to win 45.6

billion won, the equivalent of 38 million US dollars.

Only one person will win, the others it turns out will pay with their lives.

Back in 2018, Netflix chief Ted Sarando said, quote, the exciting thing for me would be

if the next stranger things came from outside America.

Right now, historically, nothing of that scale has ever come from anywhere but Hollywood

closed quote, then came Squid Game.

According to the BBC, quote, not to stranger things or Game of Thrones as a show had this

kind of pop cultural footprint.

Squid Game has achieved global mainstream visibility in a way that arguably no other

non-English language film or TV show has ever managed, closed quote.

Specifically, Squid Game is Netflix's most popular television show ever.

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