David Fincher may make Squid Game spin-off for Netflix

Iconic auteur director David Fincher is reported to be behind an upcoming English language version of Squid Game.

According to Deadline, we're talking about a new series, not a film — previously rumoured in some circles.

English language adaptations of films or TV shows originally in other languages are typically made to expand the audience of something. But with Squid Game? You’d have a hard time doing that.

The South Korean show is comfortably the most-watched Netflix series of TV ever, regardless of language, with 2.2 billion hours clocked across its first 91 days on stream.

So what could this David Fincher offshoot be about?

Not much is known about the project yet, other than that it is likely to be set in America, and Dennis Kelly is believed to be working on the script.

This is good news. Kelly wrote the original version of Utopia for the UK’s Channel 4, among other shows and movies. Utopia shares a lot of the sense of epic shadowy conspiracy that made Squid Game so fascinating, and it remains one of the best TV sci-fi thrillers of the last few decades.

More recently, Kelly wrote The Third Day, a 2020 folk-horror show starring Jude Law and Naomi Harris. It didn’t quite make the impact of Utopia or Squid Game, but still picked up a fistful of 4 and 5-star reviews.

Fincher under fire?

Fincher, meanwhile, may be gagging for a hit at this point.

He has previously worked with Netflix on films The Killer (2023) and Mank (2020). While The Killer was modestly popular at release on Netflix, neither has had a cultural impact anything close to Fincher’s earlier works.

Fincher did direct an episode of the more zeitgeist-y Love, Death and Robots back in 2022, though.

There’s no major rush for Fincher, or another big name, to tackle a US spin-off of Squid Game. After an interminable wait, the Squid Game content is already coming in thick and fast.

Squid Game season 2 will start streaming from December 26, and season 3 is pencilled in for 2025.

Is Netflix’s plan for Fincher and co. to step in once original show creator Hwang Dong-Hyuk’s planned arc is done? That would make sense.

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