Squid Game is the biggest show on the planet. We don't need an English remake.

Look, I get it. Reading subtitles is hard. Your eyes have to move down to the bottom of the screen, then back up to the action. You have to read while simultaneously trying to watch. And don't even get me started on the mental gymnastics required to appreciate a story that wasn't specifically crafted for Western sensibilities. Positively exhausting, if you ask me.

But here's the thing: Squid Game was literally the biggest show on the planet.

Not just in Korea. Not just in Asia. Everywhere. Including places where people speak English AND somehow managed to survive the absolutely excruciating ordeal of reading words whilst watching television. It's mind-blowing, really.

So, naturally, Hollywood's response to this unprecedented global success was: an English remake.

Watch the trailer for Squid Game season 3. Article continues after video.

According to multiple reports, David Fincher — yes, the Fight Club and Seven director — is rumoured to be developing an English-language Squid Game series for Netflix. Surprise, surprise.

Because apparently, 132 million people watching the original wasn't enough. We need to take this perfectly crafted South Korean masterpiece about economic inequality and societal collapse and... what? Make it about American economic inequality and societal collapse?

Don't get me wrong — I audibly gasped when I saw Cate Blanchett show up in the Squid Game season 3 finale. I love her. And I'm also aware that this is allegedly a spin-off, not a remake. But an English anything when it comes to this iconic series just feels all types of wrong.

The sheer arrogance of looking at a show that became Netflix's most successful series launch ever and thinking you can make it better by simply removing all the elements that made it culturally specific and meaningful is genuinely impressive in how tone-deaf it is.

Squid Game worked precisely because it was Korean.

The childhood games, the social commentary, the specific economic pressures of South Korean society — these weren't just window dressing. They were the entire bloody point. But sure, let's strip that all away in an attempt to make it more palatable for a global audience that has already seen it? The mind boggles.

Image: Netflix

Now, this isn't Hollywood's first rodeo when it comes to taking perfectly good foreign content and giving it the English-language treatment.

Take The Departed, for instance. Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film was actually a remake of the Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs — a brilliant crime thriller that didn't get an international release. At least there was some logic there: bringing an excellent but relatively unknown (in the west) story to a broader audience.

Same with The Ring. The American version of the Japanese horror film Ringu was genuinely terrifying and introduced J-horror to mainstream Western audiences who might never have discovered the original. I get it — sort of. My take will always be to encourage people to embrace subtitles and foreign films in the first place, but these films hadn't necessarily penetrated Western markets the way they deserved to, so I get it.

Image: Warner Bros.

But for every "successful" adaptation, there are countless disasters where studios absolutely dropped the ball. We absolutely cannot discuss failed English remakes without addressing the Scarlett Johansson disaster that was Ghost in the Shell.

Ah, what a time it would have been to be an Asian woman working in entertainment when this train-wreck of a movie came out.

Here was an iconic Japanese anime — a cyberpunk masterpiece that had already influenced countless Western films — and Hollywood's brilliant solution was to cast a white woman as the 'Asian' lead, put her in a black wig, and somehow expect everyone to just pretend that made perfect sense.

The backlash was swift and brutal, and rightfully so. To this day, Scarlett Johansson holds a special place in the hearts of the Asian community for this hilarious blunder. It truly never gets old. The film was both a critical and commercial flop, proving that audiences aren't as stupid as studios think they are.

Image: Paramount Pictures

The problem isn't just that these remakes are usually inferior (though they often are). It's the underlying assumption that English-speaking audiences are too lazy, too xenophobic, or too intellectually limited to engage with content from other cultures.

Because let's call it what it is: there's something deeply problematic about the assumption that a story is only worth telling if it's told by and for Western audiences.

Squid Game succeeded because it offered something different. It gave us a perspective we hadn't seen before, told through the lens of a culture that isn't constantly represented in mainstream western media.

When we remake these stories for English-speaking audiences, we're essentially saying that while it's good, it would be better if it was less foreign.

Here's a radical thought: instead of remaking Squid Game, why don't we just... make something new? I know, I know. Original ideas are risky. They might not have built-in audiences. They might actually require creativity.

But here's the thing about Squid Game — it was an original idea. Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk spent over a decade trying to get it made because it was too weird, too violent, too different. And look how that turned out.

Maybe, just maybe, the solution to Hollywood's creativity crisis isn't to keep remaking things that already exist. Maybe it's to take some risks and tell new stories.

Image: Netflix

Squid Game doesn't need an English remake or spinoff because Squid Game already exists, and it's perfect as it is. The countless people who watched it managed to figure out how subtitles work. The rest of you can too.

So please, Hollywood, I'm begging you: stop trying to fix things that aren't broken. Stop assuming we're too stupid or too lazy to appreciate art from other cultures. And for the love of all that's holy, stop taking brilliant, culturally specific stories and turning them into bland, universal pablum. We have enough of that already.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go re-watch the original Squid Game before someone decides it needs a musical adaptation.

Feature Image: Netflix.