Squid Game Season 2 Sets Netflix Premiere Viewership Record

Squid Game Season 2 has been one of the biggest hits for Netflix, setting a new viewership record for the streamer during its opening weekend.

What were Squid Game Season 2’s viewership numbers?

According to recent internal figures from Netflix (via The Hollywood Reporter), Squid Game’s second season’s opening weekend garnered 68 million views worldwide in the four days following its premiere on December 26. The data gathered by Netflix comes from taking the show’s total viewing hours, which was 487.6 million, and dividing it by the show’s total runtime of 7 hours and 10 minutes.

This number sets a new record for Netflix, easily beating the one-week record set by Wednesday (50.1 million) in 2022. The numbers also put Squid Game Season 2 into Netflix’s top 10 shows of all time for non-English language programming, ranking seventh following just its first week.

The first season of Squid Game managed to rack up 265.2 million views over its first 91 days, and judging by the numbers Season 2 has already garnered, it may catch it even faster. A third season of the series is also set to release in 2025, and has already been filmed.

The cast of the new season of Squid Game includes Gong Yoo, Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Gyu-young, Lee Jin-uk, Park Sung-hoon, Yang Dong-geun, Kang Ae-sim, Lee David, Choi Seung-hyun, Roh Jae-won, Jo Yu-ri, and Won Ji-an.

Hwang Dong-hyuk serves as the writer, director, and executive producer for the new season of the series. He said of Squid Game Season 2 when speaking to Tudum in 2022, “There’s definitely a lot of pressure on how to make [Season 2] even better. I know that a lot of the different fans and audiences have enjoyed the series very much, but, really, we’re focusing on how to make it even more joyful to the global audience.” 

The first season of Squid Game was released in September 2021. It quickly became one of Netflix’s most-watched series of all time and then went on to win a number of different awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Lee Jung-jae), Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series (Hwang Dong-hyuk), and more.

(Source: The Hollywood Reporter)