"Squid Game" fans better not hold their breath: Producer Hwang Dong-hyuk hasn't written the script for season two yet, saying on Monday it likely won't be released before the end of 2024.
"I have to work on season two. Hopefully I can show it to fans by the end of 2024," the South Korean writer-director told the MIPTV festival in Cannes in the south of France.
A day earlier at the adjacent Canneseries festival, he admitted to writing only three pages of script for the follow-up to the violent mega-hit.
In the "squid game", contestants from marginalized sections of society compete for money in a traditional South Korean children's game – in which the losers are put to death.
Netflix said in October that 142 million subscribers had watched the show - some two-thirds of its users - a record that calls for a second series.
But Hwang originally wrote the show as a feature film in 2009 and was only convinced to make a TV series after Netflix came to South Korea in 2016.
He said it was not pleasant to work on the script again for seven months.
"It was hell. Maybe season two will be my last series," he said with a laugh.
There were many benefits to success, however, as Hwang got a chance to meet his "idol", Steven Spielberg, who told him that he had shot the entire show in three days.
"He said he wanted to steal my mind," Hwang said.
Hwang is also working on a film that's not too far from his hit show.
"Keo Club" is a film about the murder of old people, based on a book by Italian author Umberto Eco.
Hwang said it was "even more violent than the squid game".
"I have to stay away from elderly people after its release," he said.