‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 Editing Is Ahead of Schedule, Duffer Brothers Promise at SCAD TVfest: ‘We’re Definitely on Target’ for 2025
Matt and Ross Duffer want to clear up any confusion: Yes, the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things” is coming this year. As a matter of fact, it may be even sooner than expected.
“We’re focused on visual effects sequences right now, which started back in January,” Ross Duffer told the audience at the SCAD TVfest, where the brothers were honored with the Variety Showrunners Award. “It’s going well. We’re actually ahead of schedule, which is rare for us.”
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It’s too soon to tell how the eight episodes will be released — if it will be all in one batch or, if like in Season 4, the show will be spread between two drops. “We will see,” Matt Duffer said. “I will say that it is coming this year. We’re definitely on target.”
At the recent “Next on Netflix” press event, the Duffers described the final season as “eight blockbuster movies,” which Matt Duffer admitted “sounded like a good sound bite.”
“Ross and I do love blockbuster films, we do love big special effects sequences, but at the end of the day, it’s about the character work,” he said. “What I do love about television, even though we were film guys growing up, that we’re able to do these huge cinematic special effects, but then we also have a lot of time to spend with the characters… the goal is you’re so invested in the story, and that’s what I found good TV does really well.”
“Stranger Things” star Caleb McLaughlin, who plays Lucas on the series, was also at the SCADshow theater to hand the Variety award to the Duffers. The two producers noted with awe how much McLaughlin and his fellow young stars had grown up during the course of filming “Stranger Things.”
“They’re like family now,” Matt Duffer said. “That aspect of the show has been really special. I don’t know if it’s just because there’s a bunch of them, but they’ve all turned out so well as human beings. The fear is we’re going to screw up a child by making them famous. I’m just so proud of how they’ve turned out as people. Caleb, he’s a great guy.”
Ross Duffer said the nostalgia is starting to creep in as “Stranger Things” comes to a close.
“For both of us, I think it hit mostly that last week of filming, and specifically the last day of filming when we started to wrap our main cast,” he said. “It was a full year of filming that you’re really in it moment to moment. But that last week, and particularly that last day, you started to reflect on everything and the journeys that we’ve all been on. It hit us all pretty hard. Now we’re backing in on editing, and it’ll hit us again, I think, when the show is finally released.”
As for what’s next with the “Stranger Things” franchise, the Olivier-winning West End play “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” hits Broadway next month. And beyond that, the Duffers have more ideas about the future — although they’re not able to get into specifics yet.
“This story, these characters’ stories, that’s done,” Matt Duffer said. “So that that whole story is coming to an end. There’s not like a Steve/Dustin spinoff or something. The hope is, we finished telling this story, and then you leave it, and then you tell new stories. And hopefully there are new characters that people can fall in love with.”
There’s also an opportunity for more “Stranger Things” in other venues like gaming.
“I love games,” Matt Duffer said. “That sounds like a good idea. I’m open to that, if they want to do that. For sure, there is a board game… and I got them to make a pinball machine.”
As part of their deal with Netflix, the Duffers are the executive producers on the upcoming series “The Boroughs,” from Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, who created a thriller set inside a retirement community; as well as the horror series “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” from writer Haley Z. Boston, about the week leading up to a couple’s ill-fated wedding.
Matt Duffer said “the cool part” of running their Upside Down Pictures shingle is “to use that to help get people like Haley, and Jeff and Will’s show off the ground. You know, we’re fans. We love watching TV and we love watching film. We’re trying to use the fact that our name means anything to help get some of this stuff off the ground.”
Is there a franchise that the Duffers might want to tackle, perhaps in the comic book, sci-fi or superhero realm?
“I think this kind of distressing to our agents, but no, not really,” Matt Duffer said. “If we have any chips that we can cash in from ‘Stranger Things,’ we should be doing something original.”
Added Ross Duffer, who pointed out that “Stranger Things” started as an original homage to the kind of storytelling that inspired them: “Can we take these loves, and in this case, our childhood and our friends and do something completely unique and original? Even though that wasn’t the original goal or the plan, I think that ended up being so exciting to us that we kind of want to follow that blueprint.”
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