Deadline reports a new English-language Squid Game series is now in the works at Netflix, with Zodiac and Se7en director David Fincher aboard in a development role.
Though “details are vague” and “Netflix had no comment” when asked to elaborate on the streamer’s latest team-up with the popular filmmaker, the outlet suggests this new Squid Game series will be Fincher’s next project, starting in 2025. Deadline also opined Fincher is a perfect fit for the burgeoning franchise—which has since expanded into video games and an unscripted competition series since taking the world by storm in 2021— because “it’s also similar to his 1997 thriller The Game, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. That film also revolves around real-life people becoming unwitting participants in a diabolical game.” Certainly debatable!
Though this will be the very first scripted successor series to Hwang Dong-hyuk’s revolutionary Squid Game at Netflix, it is far from Fincher’s only project at the company, whose previous collaborations with the streamer include Mindhunter, House of Cards, and Love + Death and Robots.
Rumors of the director’s involvement with a U.S.-set companion series to Squid Game have been circulating since last summer, when the Playlist suggested Fincher had put his planned Chinatown prequel series on hold for the opportunity to come aboard. Last week, insider Daniel Richtman (via World of Reel) reported his involvement, stating the new series would be an official spinoff titled Squid Game: America, offering the chance for characters from the original series to make special crossover appearances. According to both sources, Utopia‘s Dennis Kelly may be involved with the series as head writer—but for now, that remains a rumor.
Conflictingly, Production List suggests Fincher’s next project is Bitterroot, a “neo-western” scheduled to begin filming this January; it’s said to concern “a 78-year-old WWII veteran and Montana rancher burdened by heart disease, diabetes, and medical bills” who “wins a million-dollar sweepstakes,” with not-so-happy results. Come to think, the similarity of the two projects’ themes may even suggest they’re one and the same, with “Bitterroot” serving as a working title. Stranger things have happened at Netflix.
Come what may, it seems Fincher enjoys working for Netflix and, as previously noted by Deadline, stories about games. On that we can all agree.
Squid Game season two, with returning Emmy-winning star Lee Jung-jae (The Acolyte), hits the streamer November 26.
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