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       Netflix Builds a ‘Squid Game’ Universe as It Awaits a Second Season

       A reality show and a live experience are two ways of keeping the dystopian series in the public eye. Is the original’s bleak message being diluted?

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       Competitors navigating Memory Steps this week at a preview of Squid Game: The Trials, Netflix’s new attraction in Los Angeles. Credit...Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

       By Nicole Sperling

       Reporting from Los Angeles

       Dec. 2, 2023

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       On the same soundstage where Bob Barker lorded over “The Price Is Right,” “Squid Game” is coming to life.

       On Wednesday, Netflix will unveil its latest live experience, based on the dystopian hit show in which desperate South Koreans competed in a brutal contest of simple schoolyard games for a prize of 45.6 billion won (around $38 million). Winners moved closer to the money. Losers died. The live attraction mimics both the popular iconography of the series — the massive piggy bank filled with cash, a giant animatronic doll named Young-hee, the sterile white dormitory — and the childish games.

       For $30, fans of “Squid Game” will compete in some 70 minutes of play, with moral twists and turns and six group activities, including the schoolyard race Red Light, Green Light and a nonlethal version of the series’ terrifying Glass Bridge challenge, which forced contestants to choose between two clear squares for each step across a bridge. If they chose incorrectly, they descended hundreds of feet to their death.

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       Nicole Sperling is a media and entertainment reporter, covering Hollywood and the burgeoning streaming business. She joined The Times in 2019. She previously worked for Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly and The Los Angeles Times. More about Nicole Sperling

       A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 2, 2023, Section B , Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Expanding the ‘Squid Game’ Universe . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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