Netflix Squid Game Lawsuit Alleges Ripoff From Movie

Soham Shah, the creator of 2009’s Luck, sued Netflix, saying that the company used his own movie as a blueprint for its hit series. According to the lawsuit, Netflix’s Squid Game (allegedly) took the storyline from Shah’s movie, and the resemblances are striking.

Luck is a movie about a group of desperate and indebted people who are enticed to participate in a series of highly competitive games for the chance to win large sums of money.

The movie also involves wealthy people gambling on the players, who are simply trying to stay alive while questioning their own morality.

For anyone who has enjoyed Netflix’s Squid Game, these two narratives are nearly identical, which raises some questions, particularly after all the other details surrounding the movie and the series are factored in.

Before we dive into those, Shah did—to his own credit—also highlight the ways in which Netflix’s series differs from his own creation, but those differences seem nearly negligible in the grander scheme of things.

As per Shah, he wrote Luck sometime around 2006, with the story’s film version hitting worldwide theaters in July 2009, including theaters in India, the UK, the US, and the United Arab Emirates.

Hwang Dong-hyuk, the writer of Netflix’s Squid Game, claims that he first wrote his story in 2009—which is the same year Shah’s Luck was released in theaters—so he’s also on the receiving end of Shah’s legal action and copyrights claims.

Additionally, Shah stated that Luck had considerable advertising and marketing at the time, which exposed the movie to Netflix. He believes that the company ended up producing the series around the time that it did (2018 or 2019).

Netflix’s Squid Game received critical acclaim upon release, and while its unflinching brutality isn’t for the faint of heart, its sharp social commentary—along with the surprisingly tender core—is the glue that kept the viewers stuck to the screen.

Needless to say, Netflix earned massive financial success from this particular release.

In fact, Netflix’s value as a company went up by over $900 million as the result of the series’ broadcast alone. It not only became the most-watched show around the world but Netflix also claimed that the series pierced the cultural zeitgeist, becoming a popular Internet meme.

Videos and snippets from Netflix’s Squid Game released on YouTube surpassed those of Game of Thrones, and numerous content creators have parodied the series or recreated some of its games, to which the series creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has reacted positively.

Of course, accusations of plagiarism also arose, but most similarities between different works and Netflix’s Squid Game have been purely coincidental, and there wasn’t any copying from either party.

However, given the overwhelming similarities between Luck and Squid Games, and the massive success of the latter, Mr. Shah is now suing Netflix for his own piece of the honeycomb cookie.  

Source: TMZ