Ted Sarandos recently pledged to offer creatives fair financial remuneration for their involvement in crafting the best and brightest originals to roll off the Netflix production line, but a deep dive into the success of Squid Game has ended up painting the exact opposite picture instead.
Hwang Dong-hyuk might be the mastermind behind the single most-watched episodic original in the streaming service’s history – one that shattered viewership records, ended up winning six Emmys, and helped increase the value of the company by a reported $900 million – but he barely made a penny from being the mastermind behind the all-conquering juggernaut.
In fact, The LA Times noted that Dong-hyuk forfeited all intellectual property rights and received no residuals, while the man himself previously noted that Squid Game had made him “rich enough to put food on the table.” That’s bad enough in isolation, but it’s also part of a much wider problem among Netflix creatives and showrunners that doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it warrants.
Eric Andre admitted he “earned zero dollars” for his efforts in shepherding Bad Trip through a decade in development before Netflix acquired the distribution rights, while Shawn Ryan – who orchestrated one of the platform’s top-viewed TV shows ever via the first season of The Night Agent – intimated that he was in the same boat.
Being canceled is one thing, and a problem dozens of Netflix exclusives have to deal with, but delivering massive success by every conceivable metric without being fairly compensated is arguably much worse.