Squid Game Wins Big at SAG Awards

Squid Game ran away with three SAG Awards Sunday night time, making it the most-awarded media of your entire present. Lead actors Lee Jung-jae and Jung Ho-yeon gained for his or her particular person performances, and the ensemble stunt work within the present additionally snagged an Actor.

The Screen Actors Guild annual awards present exists as a union-backed present which highlights excellent achievements in acting. The SAG awards are voted on by 2100 randomly-selected members of the SAG-AFTRA union, and Actor wins are usually thought of an indicator of Academy Award winners, introduced on the finish of March.

CODA got here by as an underdog winner within the movie class, making historical past as the primary d/Deaf and disabled forged to get nominated. CODA actor Troy Kotsur gained the primary finest supporting actor award, the first Actor awarded to a deaf particular person, ever, not simply in a person class.

And then, Squid Game got here up and gained…three occasions. Which is fairly outstanding as a result of the make-up of SAG-AFTRA is primarily U.S.-based, and the flashy, ultra-violent, and deeply Korean manufacturing won’t have hit with nearly all of the voters. In reality, Squid Game is the primary Korean tv present and the primary foreign-language sequence to win Actors on the SAG awards. The indisputable fact that Squid Game not solely gained, however gained massive, marks yet one more turning level amongst voting audiences.

The door that Bong Joon-ho opened with Parasite’s historic Best Feature win on the Academy Awards in 2021 has really been knocked down, as Korean movies set up themselves as media contenders, cementing South Korean cultural imports as mainstays of the longer term. I imply, most Zoomers or Millennials on the market have at the very least heard of BTS.

But simply because Squid Game gained, doesn’t imply that there’s going to be a brand new surge of Okay-Drama entries into U.S-based awards exhibits. Netflix was in a position to enter Squid Game into the union’s awards present as a result of they funded a good portion of the present, after which handed over inventive management to creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, who crafted a deeply Korean masterpiece. However, it’s due to Netflix’s involvement that Squid Game falls into an in-between space the place it’s each a domestically funded and internationally produced movie, making it eligible for each the home and worldwide Emmys. (But as Variety experiences, double-dipping guidelines forestall it from getting into to win each awards.)

It’ll be price watching how Netflix handles awards for All of Us Are Dead, its latest hyperviolent, critically-acclaimed Okay-Drama, later within the 12 months. While it hasn’t reached the sort of impression that Squid Game has (a tall order, contemplating Squid Game is the most watched Netflix present of all time,) All of Us Are Dead shall be a greater indicator of how Okay-Dramas will current themselves at American awards exhibits.

Regardless, Squid Game has confirmed that there’s a need for worldwide–and particularly Korean–sensibilities in tv. And contemplating that each Lee Jung-jae and Jung Ho-yeon had been matched up towards the actors of Succession, a robust dramatic contender that showcased the failings of the American dream by gritty realism and backroom politics, it looks like there may be room throughout the board for extra various and absurdist tales within the American media panorama.

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