Prestigious Emmys Award has finally gone global with recent nomination of Netflix platform’s South Korean web series Squid Game. With this nomination, there should be fresh enthusiasm amongst film and drama makers in several countries, including Indian Bollywood and of course Bangladesh’s film and drama circuits.
Two years ago, popular OTT platform Netflix broke record for the Emmys with eight nominations for its German-American limited series Unorthodox, which has English, Yiddish and German dubbing. Now this year, another of the platform’s contents have helped the Television Academy truly go international.
South Korean Squid Game is the first series solely produced outside of a Western country and completely not in English to score major-category nominations at the Emmys, with 14, including best drama series. The South Korean thriller from Siren Pictures is Netflix’s most nominated series in 2022, leading Ozark and Strange Things (13 nominations each) and Inventing Anna (three nominations).
Including the expected nominations for SAG winners Lee Jung-jae (lead actor) and Jung Ho-yeon (supporting actress), five total members of the cast received nods. Park Hae-soo (who played the disgraced financier Sang-woo) and Oh Young-soo (the mysterious elderly Il-nam) will go head-to-head in the supporting actor category, while Lee You-mi landed a surprise guest actress nomination for her heartbreaking work as Sae-byeok’s marbles partner in the episode Gganbu.
That episode, which Netflix often screened at its FYC events during Squid Game’s epic nine-month awards campaign, saw the players splitting up into pairs for a game with a cruel twist, set in a period reproduction of a residential alley. “Gganbu” scored nominations in production design for production designer Chae Kyoung-sun, art director Gim En-jee and set decorator Kim Jeong-gon and single-camera picture editing for editor Nam Na-young.
Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk received a pair of solo nods for directing the pilot, “Red Light, Green Light,” and writing the finale, “One Lucky Day.” Other episodes singled out for praise include “Stick to the Team” (the one with the dormitory battle royale and tug of war), which yielded nominations in cinematography for DP Lee Hyung-deok and stunt performance for Lim Tae-hoon, Shim Sang-min, Kim Cha-i and Lee Tae-young; and “VIPS” (the one that revealed the wealthy foreigners for whom the game is staged) for special visual effects in a single episode (VFX supervisor Cheong Jai-hoon, CG supervisor (3D) Kang Moon-jung, VFX producer Kim Hye-jin, layout lead Jo Hyun-jin, matte painting supervisor Kim Seong-cheol, animation supervisor Lee Jae-bum, CG supervisor (2D) Shin Min-soo and compositing supervisors Seok Jong-yeon and Jun Sung-man).
And rounding out the bounty, composer Jung Jae-il landed a nomination for the series’ main title theme.
Hopefully next year contents produced in India and Bangladesh will find its way to Emmys.
