"The Squid Game universe has just begun."

Ted Sarandos, Netflix's co-CEO, said during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday that the surprise smash-hit Korean drama will "definitely" get a second season.

Since the dystopian drama became Netflix's most-watched series ever, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has talked about filming a second season, and has even teased a third season. Sarandos' comments today, however, are the first confirmation of the renewal from any of the streamer's senior executives.

The nine-part series, which Hwang developed, wrote, directed, and executive produced, has reached over 142 million Netflix homes and has been streamed for over 1.6 billion hours.

The series follows 456 contestants who are all in desperate financial situations who are confined in a secret location and forced to play a variety of classic Korean children's games such as Red Light, Green Light, and tug of war in order to earn 45.6 billion won ($38 million). They will, however, die if they do not win.

It follows on the heels of Netflix's announcement that it will release 25 episodes from South Korea this year. The Oscar success of Parasite, according to Sarandos, was a "turning point" for Korean drama.

He congratulated the streamer's local crew on Squid Game's success.

“They didn’t try to make the show different so that it would travel, but tried to find all the things about Korean cinema and Korean drama and build them up in a way and new levels of production values,” he said. “It’s not like we had to go in and teach anyone in Korea how to make great content. It’s an incredible market for that. There’s always been curiosity around the world, [the] K Drama market has always had pockets of success all over the place, but the ease of delivery that we’ve offered has pushed that into the mainstream.”