Squid Game: The Challenge has admitted to replacing contestants with actors for the 'safety of the players'.
Netflix finally dropped their highly-anticipated reality version of the Korean thriller Squid Game earlier this month.
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The 10-part reality series recreates the outfits and sets, although the deadly consequences from the individual games are, thankfully, replaced with an elimination-style competition.
Each elimination adds $10,000 (£7,977) to a $4.56 million (£3.66 million) prize pot, which is thought to be the largest jackpot in reality TV history.
With an 84 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, most critics seem to be enjoying the show...so far.
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The Guardian said: "The real-life version of the Netflix drama is a grandiose, addictive spectacle that will have you shouting at your TV before the end of episode one."
The Independent also compared the show to the BBC’s hit reality series The Traitors, saying: “For all that the ghost of its Korean cousin sticks in the mind, this is little more than a combination of The Traitors and Takeshi’s Castle.”
Trade paper The Hollywood Reporter was less impressed, saying: “It exists to cash in on one of the streamer’s biggest-ever hits, the 2021 South Korean scripted drama Squid Game.
"In that context, it looks not like a one-off curiosity, but like a brand extension that fundamentally misunderstands what the brand was meant to represent in the first place.”
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Compared to the scripted version of Squid Game, where most contestants died, the studio wanted to ensure that the safety of the contestants was a priority in the real-life version.
And a recent episode of Squid Game: The Challenge shows players falling through glass from an extended height during the Glass Bridge challenge - however - it turns out that they were just stunt doubles.
"The fall itself was done by a professional stunt person for the safety of the players," executive producer John Hay told Entertainment Weekly.
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"Obviously, that's paramount for us. There was a large airbag underneath, but that also needs to be done by professionals.
"The order of the pattern of the [glass squares], which is a pass and which is a fail, is all predetermined before they've stepped on the bridge.
"And their reactions and their peers' reactions to stepping on a fail door and being eliminated are all real. And then, at the last minute, we swapped them out, and a stunt person did the fall."
"It was a safe distance," executive producer Stephen Lambert clarified.
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"The way it's filmed makes it look like it's further than it actually was."
Topics: Netflix, TV and Film
Anish Vij