I’m not sure they looked as weird to the Korean audience as they did to western viewers.
Maybe the American version would be a little more interesting if they could incorporate tariffs somehow.
Watching the Korean spoken language with English subtitles version, 2 of the VIPs were dubbed into English, the woman and the older guy with the ram’s horn mask, and the other 3 were not. You could tell by the echoes of their voices that 3 were recorded on set & other 2 were in a studio. The woman was played by an actress from Hong Kong, so she may have had an accent they wanted to eliminate.
But when I switched it to English spoken language, one of the VIPs who was not dubbed in the Korean version was now dubbed - the younger one who bet on 222. Different voice actor too, they didn’t just have the actor re-record his lines. The older VIP with the British accent was identical between the 2 versions, so no idea how they decided what to do. If you want to see for yourself, go to episode 3 about 40 minutes in, when they’re waiting for the jump rope game to begin.
I hope they don’t make an American based sequel. First, this was perfect as is, and second, getting the perspective of another country’s culture & problems made it more interesting. “Parasite” wouldn’t have won Best Picture if it was made in America.
It seems like a pretty solid lock that it’s happening from the ending to S.3:
The Front Man, being driven in L.A., while stopped at a light, looks down an alley and sees an American recruiter, played by Cate Blanchett, recruiting a potential player. She gives him a knowing look and a nod.
What I thought was weird was that they appeared to be playing Ddakji, the same recruitment game as the Korean recruiter. Shouldn’t it have been some Americanized game, like maybe pitching quarters against the wall? I used to play that with kids in the neighborhood-- whoever’s closest to the wall gets to keep both quarters. Whoever lost had to compete in a further series of children’s games, with life or death consequences. Y’know, typical kid stuff.
I mean, that leaves the door open, but it’s not like there’s a signed contract and a script, director, and cast ready to go.
That scene is intended to show that the game is far bigger than just what we have been shown. It may have been intended to spark interest in an American version but the Korean creators have no intention of producing such a show themselves. The concept would be optioned to an American company and writers.
So that WAS Cate Blanchette! I meant to look it up but forgot.
On a side note, What motivation would American players have to sign up and more importantly, keep voting yes to continue? In Korea, they used the massive personal debt crisis. Would that work in the US, or is simple greed good enough? Just tell them the prize is $100 million watch them race to sign up?
I wonder if they could throw in an Epstein reference by having the games on his old island.
Then the players would just be a bunch of assholes nobody could root for.
Well, maybe some of the players need the $ for sympathetic reasons, while others are just greedy.
I may be wrong. I thought I had heard there was going to be an American version, and the fact that they used Cate Blanchett (no need for spoiler blurs now 
) as the American recruiter seemed to indicate an official ‘handoff’-- I wouldn’t think they’d use someone of her star power just as a quick cameo, but who knows…maybe she had some free time in her schedule and did it for kicks and giggles.
Uhh, Americans don’t have personal debt crises? Plenty of Americans have been bankrupted or put into massive debt through job loss, medical bills, college loans, skyrocketing real estate prices, etc. etc. Also, greed is always a motivating factor, just as it was in the Korean version.
Eh, huge stars do very quick cameos all the time. Brad Pitt showed up for 5 seconds in Deadpool 2. Cate Blanchette herself did a short cameo (masked) in Hot Fuzz.
If I was making a remake of this I would probably scrap all game ideas that had a mathematical zero chance of no deaths. Every game could have a 100% survival rate. Random chance, skill levels and assholishness of other players are what causes the deaths.
Story-wise, that might be a good way to go-- one of the player dynamic plot elements I found most interesting was how the majority of players continually rationalized voting to go on, even after the horrors of the previous games. And yes, also the depiction of how awful some people can become in such a situation, like blocking the path and pushing people off in the jump rope game. Or deciding the newborn baby was an easy go-to victim.
But realistically (not that there’s anything very realistic about the scenario) I think a sadistic but practical game manager would want every game to be set up to take at least some players out, to move things along. If every game had the possibility of 100% survivors, like the game where you break a shape out a sugar mold in S.1, you could easily have too many survivors by the final game, or worse yet, risk boring your soulless VIPs.
Here’s my idea for an American Squid Game. Financially strapped parents are recruited to pimp out their troubled teens to a “summer camp” where they will not only be toughened up but also potentially bring home some coin. The VIPs are business magnates seeking out the most ruthless players as candidates for middle management in their firms.
Wouldn’t that just be “The Apprentice: Teen Edition”? 
Or maybe that was your actual joke…
Only just watched the last episode.
I thought it was great. Making it familiar enough to still be squid game but different enough to be a fresh story and largely not predictable was quite an undertaking, but they landed it. A lot of interesting new characters and themes too.
So in terms of an American SG, I hope they do throw a curve ball like @Elmer_J.Fudd suggests. They’ve shown that you don’t need to recycle the plot beat for beat to still use the overall theme successfully.
On that latter point, my initial feeling was that Cate blanchett was horribly miscast as the recruiter (the slaps looked really awkward for one thing), but on second thought it depends what kind of series they go for. Maybe in the American version the recruiter has a more central role? So Im open-minded.
My problem with Cate Blanchett as the recruiter is that she would have made an amazing front man.
There’s too much chance of having too many players for the later games. Earlier, I wondered if they chose each subsequent game to conform to a formula for the most entertaining number of players in the last round. The marbles game was a guaranteed 50% death rate, as was tug of war. Maybe the games have been done often enough to have a high confidence in the number of surviving players. A good question is what happens if they lose too many players in the early games, like if all but 10 of the players are eliminated in redlight/greenlight.
It is possible for her to have been both or even to retcon it and have her behind the scenes.
The way she looked at him reminded me of the nods The Narrator in Fight Club would get as he would be out and about in the city. When one of the recaps I watched mentioned David Fincher being on board, it made me wonder if that was on purpose. I mean, I doubt it, Fight Club is pushing 3 decades old and I don’t know that Fincher has a habit of dropping those kinds of Easter Eggs, but I still found it amusing.