Netflix sued by filmmaker who claims Squid Game copied 2009 Bollywood film

September 17, 20244 Mins Read

Netflix has been sued by an Indian filmmaker who accused them of copying his film Luck to make the hit show Squid Game, an allegation denied by the streaming service as having no merit.

Soham Shah filed a lawsuit in New York on 13 September, alleging that Squid Game is a rip-off of his Hindi-language film Luck, which was released in 2009.

Squid Game, which was released on Netflix in 2021 and was created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, is a South Korean dystopian series which follows a group of cash-strapped contestants fighting to the death for a life-changing sum of money. It quickly became the platform’s most-watched series of all time, with more than 142 million member households tuning in to watch within the first four weeks of its release, surpassing period romance series Bridgerton.

Shah’s film Luck follows a group of people “endowed with ‘luck’ who are recruited by an “underworld kingpin” to participate in a “series of challenges designed to test their ‘Luck’ factor, as gamblers around the world bet on them,” according to its official synopsis on IMDB.

Shah, who wrote and directed Luck, claims Squid Game was written the year his film released (Viacom18 Studios)

“The main plot, characters, themes, mood, setting and sequence of events of Squid Game are strikingly similar to that of Luck, defying any likelihood that such similarities could be coincidence,” Shah said in the suit, according to Bloomberg.

According to the lawsuit, Shah, who also directed Luck, claims to have written his story “in or around 2006”, and that Hwang wrote Squid Game in 2009, the same year Luck was released in theatres, reported TMZ.

Shah has also named Hwang in his lawsuit.

The report also added Shah’s claims that Netflix would have had access to Luck, since it was released worldwide in July 2009 in theatres in India, the UK, US, and UAE, and due to its “considerable advertising and marketing”.

Shah’s lawsuit also claims that Netflix has continued to infringe on his copyrights for Luck by creating further content derived from Squid Game, like a reality TV series, which was released in 2023 and an immersive experience set to launch in New York City in October.

He further claimed that the show increased Netflix’s market value by over $900m (£683.05m).

Squid Game became Netflix’s most-watched series of all time after its release in 2021 (Netflix)

Shah is seeking unspecified damages as well as an injunction preventing Netflix from infringing his copyrights by marketing and streaming Squid Game, profiting from the sale of merchandise, and developing other shows and works that may infringe the copyrights in the future.

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Netflix has responded in a statement, saying: “This claim has no merit. Squid Game was created by and written by Hwang Dong-hyuk and we intend to defend this matter vigorously.”

In 2021, several Indians had in fact made posts on X about the similarities between Squid Game and Luck.

A second season of Squid Game is set to premiere later this year on 26 December, and a third and final season is scheduled for release in 2025.

Squid Game made history in 2022 as the first foreign-language drama to win major awards at the Emmys.

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