Squid Game — a fictional drama from South Korea — is Netflix’s “biggest-ever series at launch,” the streaming company exclusively told CNN yesterday.
The dystopian series, in which contestants who are deeply in need of money play deadly children’s games to win cash prizes, has been viewed by 111 million accounts since debuting on Netflix on September 17.
To give that number some context, Netflix announced earlier this year that 82 million households watched “Bridgerton” in the first 28 days following its Christmas debut. “Squid Game” surpassed that number in a shorter amount of time.
The series is No. 1 on Netflix’s Top 10 lists in 94 countries around the world. It’s the platform’s first-ever Korean series to reach No. 1 in the United States.
The numbers speak to the sheer size of “Squid Games’” popularity and the speed at which it took off. But Netflix’s — and all streaming services’ — rating data comes with some important caveats.
For starters, these numbers are from Netflix (NFLX) itself and have not been vetted by any outside sources. Also, that 111 million figure doesn’t mean everyone watched the series from start to finish. It is based on Netflix’s metric of accounts watching at least two minutes of the series.