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Jeff Bezos praised Netflix co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos for the rival platform’s “awesome and inspiring” international content – and fans are confident the Amazon founder may be hinting at something .
“. @ ReedHastings and Ted Sarandos and the team at @Netflix are so often successful. Their internationalization strategy is not easy and they make it work. Awesome and inspiring. (And I can’t wait to watch the show. ), ”Bezos tweeted on Saturday.
Indeed, Netflix makes it “work”. Produced in South Korea, “Squid Game” is the most talked about show right now, on its way to being the streaming service’s most popular original series, a title currently owned by Shonda Rhimes’ “Bridgerton” . At Vox Media’s Code conference this week, Sarandos said the dystopian drama is already its best show in 90 countries. It premiered on September 17th.
But, with his tweet, some are wondering if this is a sign that something bigger is going on between Amazon and Netflix – maybe a team or even a buyout. “Something is wrong,” Franklin Leonard tweeted.
Indeed, “Squid Game” turns out to be a resounding success for the streaming service. In fact, it’s so popular in South Korea that one of the country’s biggest internet service providers is suing Netflix over it. Reuters reported on Friday that a spokesperson for SK Broadband said it wanted Netflix to pay for the costs of increasing network traffic and maintenance.
Earlier this year, a Seoul court ruled that streaming services like Netflix should “reasonably” pay.
The series’ success comes on top of big subscriber gains for Netflix during the COVID-19 pandemic – although on Tuesday it announced it had only added 1.54 million new subscribers in the second quarter , a far cry from the 10 million new subscribers the company added in the same period last year. Also note: the streaming service lost 400,000 subscribers in the United States and Canada in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video and discovery + signed the most new streaming customers in the last quarter, according to data from Kantar Media.
Of course, many on social media joke that if Bezos was actually a participant in the game, they think he would be one of the villains.
If you haven’t seen the bloodthirsty series yet, here’s what you need to know: “Squid Game” has a similar idea to “The Hunger Games”. But, instead of having the contestants kill each other, they play children’s games in order to win a huge cash prize. It is the losers who are gradually being killed.
In the game there are characters known as VIPS. They wear glittering gold masks and watch competitors battle each other to the death from an observation room. And after Bezos’ tweet, some fans feel it’s the role he would have in the game.
You can check out more answers to Bezos’ potentially cryptic words below.
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