A British solicitors is threatening to sue Netflix over alleged injuries sustained by contestants during filming of Squid Game: The Challenge.
Leaving aside the question of whether Squid Game: The Challenge entirely misses the darkly satirical point of the show on which it’s based, it sounds as though Netflix may one day come to regret commissioning the show in the first place.
A story at The Hollywood Reporter reveals that a British firm of solicitors – which specialises in injury claims – is on the cusp of filing a lawsuit against the streaming giant. Express Solicitors claims that several contestants on the game show have sustained injuries during filming, and that its producers “pushed the boundaries of safety in the name of entertainment.”
Those injuries are said to include “hypothermia and nerve damage” which, the lawyers say, arose as a “result of poor health and safety standards on set.”
“We have sent letters of claim on behalf of contestants injured in this show,” said Express Solicitors’ CEO Daniel Slade in a statement. “From what we’ve been told they pushed the boundaries of safety in the name of entertainment. Production companies need to ensure that health and safety standards on their shows don’t leave people at the risk of harm.”
Netflix’s Squid Game spin-off first hit the headlines earlier this year, with The Sun reporting that contestants had spent several hours in sub-zero temperatures as part of one particular game – Red Light, Green Light, previously seen in the original South Korean series.
“It was like a warzone,” one anonymous contestant said at the time. “People were getting carried out by medics but we couldn’t say anything.”
The show’s executive producer has denied that conditions were any harsher than other reality TV shows, however. “Compared to some of the other survival shows that have been made,” exec Stephen Lambert said, according to THR. “This is no harder than those, and in lots of shows you have people sometimes treated for mild complaints, which is what happened in that particular game.”
Read more: BBFC | Squid Game, The Suicide Squad top 2021 complaints list
Speaking of the show’s sizeable prize, Lambert also said that the level of challenge was rightly matched by the potential reward. “We’re giving away the largest prize in TV competition history,” he said. “It wasn’t going to be a walk in the park to win $4.56 million.”
Whether the contestants’ claim is successful or not, it’s possibly fair to say that Squid Game: The Challenge hasn’t gone over that well with critics. USA Today described it as “Morally wrong, and boring”; The Verge called it a “morbid LARP trapped inside a reality TV show. CNN’s Brian Lowry, meanwhile, wrote that “Just producing a reality competition show based on Squid Game is a pretty good way of signalling to the world that you didn’t get Squid Game.“
Squid Game: The Challenge is currently streaming on Netflix.
