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Squid Game creator lost the contest
"We would like to re-negotiate..." Fans of Squid Game at a December 2021 convention in Johor Bahru, Malaysia
WHAT COULD you possibly lose, signing away rights in your work? Several tens of millions, perhaps? The Los Angeles Times reports that South Korean writer and director Hwang Dong-hyuk in 2019 pitched a script for a dystopian thriller - which became Squid Game: that show about outcasts competing to clear their debts - or die.
Reporter Max Kim says that the show increased the value of Netflix company by an estimated $900 million, "according to internal Netflix documents". Back in 2021 the Guardian reported estimates that it had made £650 million. Take your pick.
The catch is that Hwang Dong-hyuk signed away all rights to his creation. He told the Guardian only that he is left with "enough to put food on the table".
If Hwang Dong-hyuk were a citizen of an EU country, he could try out the "windfall" provisions in the Digital Single Market Directive. His does rather look like the canonical case of a creative work making its exploiter far more than the original contract envisaged - and the Directive instructs memeber states to ensure that creators can re-negotiate contracts in precisely this case. Instead, he is a citizen of a country whose representatives once claimed that copyright infringement is essential to their national culture. Bad luck.
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