Squid Game, Netflix's biggest original series launch, could earn the streamer nearly $900 million USD in value.
According to a Bloomberg report citing figures from an internal Netflix document, the South Korean survival drama show created $891.1 million USD in impact value, which is described as "a metric the company uses to assess the performance from individual shows."
Documents reveal that Squid Game's debut season cost about $2.4 million USD an episode, totalling to approximately $21.4 million USD.
The nine-episode thriller which became an international hit after its launch last month is about a brutal contest in which highly indebted people compete to win a huge cash prize. The contestants play a number of kids games - but get killed if they lose.
In comparison to its estimated net worth, the showcost just $21.4 million (roughly Rs. 160 crores) to produce, Bloomberg said.
According to the report, about 132 million had watched at least two minutes of the show in its first 23 days, easily breaking the record set by UK costume drama Bridgerton, which was streamed by 82 million accounts in its first 28 days.
Netflix had earlier announced the show had amassed 111 million fans, but Bloomberg said those figures were based on slightly older data.
Los Gatos, California-based Netflix estimated that 89 percent of people who started the show watched more than one episode, the news agency said, and 66 percent of the viewers finished watching the series in the first 23 days.
Netflix declined to comment on the report. An attorney for the company told Bloomberg that it would be inappropriate for Bloomberg to disclose the confidential data contained in the documents that it had reviewed.
The series is also the first Korean drama to snatch the top spot on Netflix in the United States, and has even spurred interest among people in learning Korean.
IThe show has even drawn positive comments from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with the billionaire calling the work "impressive and inspiring." Amazon's streaming service Prime Video competes with Netflix.