Netflix shelves David Fincher’s Squid Game America spinoff

MUMBAI: The game, it seems, has finally run out of rounds for David Fincher. Netflix has reportedly shelved the filmmaker’s long-discussed American spinoff of Squid Game, bringing an end to a project that had been quietly inching towards production for nearly two years.

Reports of Squid Game: America first surfaced in 2024, with Fincher attached to direct and Dennis Kelly, creator of the 2013 British thriller series Utopia, brought on to write the script. Despite the high-profile names involved, the project moved at a notably slow pace, with little publicly confirmed progress.

The spinoff appeared to get a fresh lease of life in November 2025, when the Film and Television Industry Alliance listed Squid Game: America as a production scheduled to shoot in Los Angeles in February 2026. That production window has since passed, and sources cited by The Playlist now say Netflix has abandoned the project.

According to the report, Netflix’s thinking around the Squid Game franchise has changed significantly since the American adaptation was first conceived. The streaming giant was initially keen on taking the record-breaking Korean survival drama into the US, but is now understood to be more interested in exploring the Squid Game universe through individual international markets.

That does not necessarily mean a wave of country-specific versions is already in the works. The Playlist’s sources reportedly stressed that projects such as Squid Game: Brazil or Squid Game: Norway are not currently known to be in development.

The collapse of the Fincher project appears to have several moving parts. Sources pointed to the long production process, changes among Netflix executives and Fincher’s other commitments, including his work on The Adventures of Cliff Booth, as factors behind the decision.

The filmmaker’s version had generated considerable interest because it would have marked a major shift for one of Netflix’s biggest global franchises. The original Squid Game, created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, became a worldwide phenomenon by turning a deadly competition into a sharp commentary on inequality, debt and social pressure.

Netflix, however, has not closed the door on the wider universe. The third season’s surprise appearance by Cate Blanchett hinted at the possibility of Games being played in other parts of the world, although her involvement was not connected to Fincher’s planned series.

The ending of the Korean original had already left the franchise with room for further stories. Hwang had previously discussed the possibility of a spinoff exploring what happened to characters during the time gap between the first and second seasons. At the same time, he maintained that the third season represented the conclusion of the central story.

“Its the finale for the whole series. The whole show. It’s time to say goodbye,” Hwang had said about the third season.

That leaves Netflix with a familiar streaming dilemma: how to keep a blockbuster universe alive without simply repeating its biggest hit. With Squid Game: America apparently off the board, the next move could determine whether the franchise becomes a genuinely international property or remains anchored primarily to its Korean roots.