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Stranger Things

Stranger Things 2

Stranger Things 3

Stranger Things 4

STRANGER THINGS

Stranger Things creators Ross and Matt Duffer are brothers from North Carolina. They made their own amateur films from an early age and later went to Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. The Duffers made an inauspicious and rocky start to their career when they wrote and directed a science fiction horror film called Hidden in 2012. Hidden sat on the shelf and was only released three years later in 2015. It failed to spark much interest and largely sank without trace. Hidden grossed only $310,273 from a limited release and the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes a respectable if hardly spectacular 53%. The Duffers were hurt by the lack of exposure Hidden endured and feared that their career might be over before it had even begun. Although a competent and mildly interesting mystery thriller, there was scant evidence in Hidden (a grim affair about a family who hide in a bunker after some unspecified and mysterious disaster has rendered the surface too dangerous) to suggest its creators were capable of an audience pleasing pop culture behemoth like Stranger Things.

Hidden had a Twilight Zone style twist at the end and some pop culture references (the little girl in Hidden quotes Heather O'Rourke in Poltergeist at one point) but few would have predicted great things from the Duffers on the evidence of this movie. One person you couldn't accuse of lacking clairvoyance though was the film director, writer, and producer M. Night Shyamalan. Shyamalan loved the screenplay for Hidden and personally hired the Duffers to join the creative staff on his mystery show Wayward Pines. Wayward Pines was like a blend of The Prisoner and Twin Peaks (but never as satisfying or interesting as that appealing description might make it sound) and had an outrageous twist a few episodes in.

Though a solid enough show, especially in the first season with Matt Dillon, Wayward Pines didn't make a huge impression (at least not compared to the early buzz it had generated) and has been rather forgotten since it aired. Fox declined to produce a third season of Wayward Pines and that was the end of the show. The Duffers worked on the first season of Wayward Pines. They were able to hone their writing skills and observe the mechanics of television production from the inside during their time working for Shyamalan. The Duffers soon began to plot a TV show of their own that would (to their delight and astonishment) eventually far surpass Wayward Pines in popularity.

The Duffers were born in 1984 and part of the last generation of children who experienced life before mobile telephones and the internet. This was a time when children still made their own entertainment and lived in their imaginations. The Duffers rode their bikes and roamed the woods - dreaming of having fantastical adventures like the ones experienced by the characters in Tolkien books or the kids in The Goonies and Joe Dante's Explorers. The happy childhood memories of the Duffers would become a big part of Stranger Things. It is no coincidence that Stranger Things takes place at a time before our modern day digital overload. The eighties seems a much more innocent and carefree time today because the intrusion of news, information, technology, and media was considerably less claustrophobic.

The Duffers rented many films from the video store (they loved to deceive their unsuspecting mother into renting an 18 certificate horror movie) and devoured the chilling stories of Stephen King and Clive Barker. All of these influences (and many more) would drip their way into Stranger Things. The films and stories of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and Stephen King in particular were baked into the DNA of the Duffers. The Duffers used the money they had made on Wayward Pines to support themselves while they planned their proposed television show. Jaws was always the favourite film of the Duffer Brothers. In deference to Steven Spielberg's classic 1975 shark thriller, the Duffers decided to give the TV show they were planning a coastal backdrop. Montauk was chosen as both the location and title of the show.

The Duffers wrote a rough story treatment for Montauk that concerned a secret and chillingly fantastical and frightening government conspiracy only exposed by the mysterious disappearance of a child. The story was a blend of science fiction and horror but the Duffers also wanted to mimic the feelgood aura of the Steven Spielberg factory Amblin in its family oriented heyday. The Duffers used the term Dark Amblin to describe what they wanted their show to be like. They wanted the show to be scary in places but still something that a family could potentially watch together. Montauk was to take place in the early 1980s. The Duffers were determined though that Montauk should not be nostalgia merely for the sake of nostalgia. The story and characters would have to justify their own existence if this show was going to work.

Montauk is a real village on the east end of the Long Island peninsula. For many years it was home to an air force base named Camp Hero. The base was originally tasked with watching out for Nazi U-boats and then became a Cold War radar station with the mission of charting the movement of any Soviet long range aircraft that might be encroaching on American airspace. The base officially closed in the early 1980s but the huge radar antenna was left standing. In 1992, a man named Preston Nichols wrote a book called The Montauk Project in which he claimed that Camp Hero was the site of secret government experiments into time travel, teleportation, ESP, monsters, space travel, and other equally unlikely areas of research.

Preston Nichols claimed that he had been in charge at Camp Hero but the memories of his time there were repressed. Now it had all come back to him. One of the many claims in The Montauk Project was that the government kidnapped children to use in these strange experiments at Camp Hero. These missing 'milk carton kids' became pawns in the battle of the Cold War. The children were given super powers, shuttled through time in experiments, and even sent into space. The Montauk Project is obviously a work of fiction and not taken seriously but it was very influential in the genesis of what would eventually become Stranger Things. The Duffer Brothers read about (and clearly enjoyed) the Montauk Project conspiracy theories and used them as inspiration in their story treatment for Montauk. They wanted the village of Montauk, the Long Island coast and beaches, and (of course) Camp Hero and its giant radar antenna to be the visible backdrop for the characters in their show.

There was though a more plausible element to the Montauk conspiracies that might have been very influential in the conception of Stranger Things. In the eighties and nineties, local teenagers in Montauk would sometimes venture up to Camp Hero at night armed with video cameras and secretly explore the abandoned base. One curious thing these kids noticed was that some of the rooms in Camp Hero had psychedelic wallpaper patterns. These garish interiors were very suggestive of Project MKUltra - a top secret CIA funded experiment into mind control that made use of the mind-altering drug LSD. MKUltra was a response to American fears that the Soviets were more advanced in brainwashing and mind control techniques. The MKUltra experiments included remote viewing and extrasensory perception. While these things were never proven to be real, the actual experiments did actually happen. Project MKUltra ended in 1973 and only became public knowledge after the experiment was terminated. The Montauk Project was fiction but Project MKUltra was fact. Project MKUltra would become a very important component of the TV show the Duffers were planning.

The Duffers attempted to attract interest in Montauk with a special pitch book or 'bible' for the proposed project. The pitch document was designed to look like a frayed eighties paperback horror novel. The pitch, in order to convey the intended atmosphere and tone of Montauk, included striking still images from the following movies - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Altered States, Poltergeist, Hellraiser, Stand By Me, Firestarter, A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Jaws. The influence of these (and many more) films would be plain to see when Stranger Things eventually hit the small screen.

The pitch document for Montauk included a number of elements that were later discarded for Stranger Things. In the pitch document story notes for Montauk, Mike Wheeler ventures into the Upside Down to search for Will Byers. Another discarded element has Jonathan Byers (in what was clearly going to be a plot thread inspired by Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind) becoming obsessed with an inexplicable dimensional rift in the family shed where Will vanished. In the pitch book for Montauk, Terry Ives is not the catatonic mother of Eleven but an eccentric male conspiracy theorist with huge spectacles who keeps pestering Hopper with paranoid warnings about suspicious secret activity at Camp Hero. The character of Terry Ives in the Montauk pitch is clearly the basis for Murray Bauman (who would only be introduced in the second season of Stranger Things).

Joyce Byers was much blunter in the Montauk pitch. She was a loud, brassy New Yorker and larger than life. The pitch document suggested that the limited nature of Montauk (in that it would be more like a miniseries than traditional television) could entice some film actors to the adult roles. Marisa Tomei and Naomi Watts were mentioned as examples of the sort of names that might potentially be signed to play Joyce. The character of Joyce Byers swears like a trooper in the Montauk pilot script but her language is considerably tamer in Stranger Things. The head of the secret government laboratory in the Montauk pitch is not Dr Brenner but an enigmatic man known only as Agent One. Jim Hopper is more or less the same in the Montauk pitch as he is in Stranger Things. Dustin seems more vague in the pitch compared to the character we eventually saw Gaten Matarazzo play in Stranger Things and more of a simplistic trope. He is described in the pitch as an overweight bullied geek with glasses.

Lucas (who was originally named Lucas Conley rather than Lucas Sinclair) is described in the Montauk pitch as a kid who will begin the show as a comic relief character but become darker and more complex because of a bitter divorce his parents are going through at home. The divorce subplot involving the parents of Lucas was completely jettisoned by the time Stranger Things went before the cameras. In fact, we only catch the briefest glimpse of his parents in season one. When we see more of them in season two, the parents of Lucas clearly have a happy marriage. Will Byers is described in the pitch as someone who is bullied at school because of his colourful clothes and nonconformist attitude. This did not feature in Stranger Things although the description of Will as an avid fantasy gamer applied to both the pitch and the actual show.

There are things in both the pitch and the Montauk pilot script (penned by the Duffers) that didn't make it into Stranger Things. In Stranger Things, Eleven is no longer a feral girl who eats raw fish when she stumbles into Benny's diner (which was a Fish & Chip cafe in the Montauk pilot script). The scene where Ted Wheeler gives his TV a shake to tune in Knight Rider was slightly different in the pilot script. Ted was originally going to be trying to tune in CHiPs - a late seventies and early eighties NBC show about two motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol. In the pilot script it is Lucas and not Dustin who has a crush on Nancy Wheeler. Mike Wheeler has a birthmark in the pilot script which the bullies make fun of and Mike also has a crush on Jennifer Hays. Jonathan is described as having dark hair down to his shoulders in the pilot script and works in a cinema.

The pool party at Steve's house in Stranger Things (where Barb was killed by the Demogorgon) is a beach party in the pilot script. Barb decides to leave and go home but her car is attacked by a mysterious creature before she can drive away. She staggers along the beach and notices strange four legged creatures up ahead. Hopper's line in Stranger Things about mornings being for coffee and contemplation was not in the pilot script for Montauk. The sequence where Will Byers is stalked by the Demogorgon and vanishes is pretty much identical though in both the Montauk pilot script and The Vanishing of Will Byers.

The opening to the pilot script is more elaborate than the beginning of the first episode of Stranger Things (where the frightened scientist is desperately trying to get to the presumed safety of an elevator). The pilot script's opening has Agent One (aka Dr Brenner) encountering a number of slain scientists in the wake of the carnage created by Eleven's escape and the arrival of the unknown monster. The pilot script for Montauk cuts to the chase a lot quicker than Stranger Things. By the end of the pilot script even Hopper has deduced that something strange is going on in the village. It takes Hopper much longer in Stranger Things to come around to the fact that scary and fantastical things are happening in Hawkins.

Benny Hammond, the diner owner who is killed by Connie Frazier in the first episode of Stranger Things, was named Benny Henderson in the pilot script for Montauk. This would appear to suggest that Benny might originally have been conceived as a relative of Dustin. Benny also has a ferocious dog in the pilot script. The character who was the most different in the Montauk pitch is Scott Clarke - the school science teacher. In the pitch, Mr Clarke is clearly patterned on Indiana Jones. In the pilot script for Montauk, Mr Clarke is described as young, magnetic, and handsome. The female students in his class all have a crush on him. The pitch document promised that Mr Clarke would play a major role in the show and be the key to unlocking the mystery that is besieging the characters. It was a very different (and less important) Mr Clarke that we later got in Stranger Things.

In the pitch document, Montauk is set in the fall of 1980. The pitch proposed that the music in the show should be a synth score inspired by John Carpenter's The Fog and The Thing. It also proposed that a sequel (a second season of Montauk) would take place in 1990 when the kids are now young adults and must reunite to fight the strange forces threatening their village again. This was patently inspired by Stephen King's IT and another element in the pitch that never happened in the end. It is sometimes reported that Montauk was pitched as an anthology show but the evidence seems to contradict this. The pitch book for Montauk clearly proposed one single story and one set of characters.

The vague notion of setting a second season of the show in 1990 ten years later quickly became obsolete when Stranger Things began shooting and the Duffers saw how good the child actors were. The notion of having a second season of Strangers Things with the likes of Millie Bobby Brown and Gaten Matarazzo replaced by older actors was unthinkable.

The Duffers had very briefly considered pitching Montauk as a proposed film when they first had the idea but they always felt it would be much better as a miniseries or TV show. It is possible (though no sure thing) that they could have secured some funding to make Montauk as a movie but Stranger Things (as it would become) was clearly much better suited to be a television show. Think of all the great moments in Stranger Things we would have missed out on if the eight hours of story had been condensed down into a two hour or 100 minute movie script.

The networks and television executives did not bite when the Duffers began pitching Montauk. No one seemed convinced that Montauk was something they should really be investing in. The Duffers were an unproven commodity and few executives seemed to see much appeal in a TV show where the main characters appeared to be children. It appears from the raft of initial rejections that a number of television networks didn't really understand what the Duffers were trying to do with Montauk. Fantasy shows with science fiction elements were not exactly a rarity on television and the networks evidently didn't see anything special about Montauk that would make it stand out from the pack. There had also been a large number of underwhelming small screen miniseries and TV movies based on Stephen King stories and it is possible that the networks decided that Montauk simply sounded like another one of those. The genius pitch of Montauk, that is a Stephen King miniseries directed by the 1980s version of Steven Spielberg, was apparently lost on the networks.

When they later reflected on this very frustrating period of rejection after rejection, the Duffers said they got the impression that networks were looking for Twin Peaks or a detective show rather than a science fiction horror fantasy adventure show like Montauk. Some of the networks even suggested that the Duffers should remove the children from the pilot script and just focus on Jim Hopper. Anyone who thought Montauk would be improved by removing all the children clearly didn't really understand what the Duffers were doing at all. The pitch for Montauk received over a dozen rejections before the Duffers had a lucky and very welcome stroke of fortune. Shawn Levy, a director, producer, and writer best known for films like the Night at the Museum series and Real Steel, encountered the pitch and story treatment for Montauk and loved the concept. At long last, the Duffers had finally found someone on their wavelength who understood what they were trying to do.

The enthusiastic Shawn Levy wanted to be involved with the project and would end up as a co-producer and director on the show alongside the Duffers. A deal was struck within 24 hours with Netflix for Montauk to go into production. The budget was set at $6 million an episode. Montauk was to be an eight hour long miniseries with one long story that had a beginning, middle, and end. A capsule summary of the plot for Montauk still had a mysterious girl escaping from a secret and sinister government laboratory as a local child inexplicably vanished. This core plot would remain intact and not be changed at all.

Montauk was eventually dropped as the location for the show. The Duffers, on reflection, decided a coastal shoot would present technical and logistical problems that were probably best avoided. The weather on the coast was also an obvious concern. The Duffers were as aware as anyone that shooting Jaws on Martha's Vineyard had been a nightmare for Steven Spielberg with the bad weather and tourist sailboats constantly roaming into view and ruining shots. They didn't want Montauk to be a nightmare production. The Duffers decided that the story for their show would now take place in a more generic any town USA backdrop rather than the Amity Island inspired Montauk. Everywhere from Texas to the Pacific Northwest was considered as the new backdrop for the show. Eventually, the Duffers declared the show would now be set in Indiana in a fictional town named Hawkins that is hemmed in by nature and woodland. As a consequence of this decision, Montauk obviously had to be axed as the title of the show.

The Duffers considered many new titles after Montauk was dropped. The titles they considered were The Rift, The Nether, Sentinel, Flickers, The Keep, The Tesseract, and Wormhole. The Keep was the title of a Michael Mann horror film and The Tesseract was the title of an Alex Garland novel so no prizes for originality of those two fronts (which probably explains why they were not chosen). A title they nearly settled on was Indigo but Matt Duffer eventually came up with Stranger Things - which was inspired by the Stephen King story Needful Things. Ross Duffer hated the title Stranger Things at first but eventually got used to it.

The Duffers had to remove all the beach scenes and references to Camp Hero that featured in their pilot script and the new scripts they were formulating. In the Montauk pilot script, the Byers family lived in the shadow of Camp Hero and Hopper lived in a shack on the beach. Camp Hero played a big part in the story but a mysterious laboratory in Indiana would now have to take its place. One person who wasn't very happy at all with all these changes was the actor David Harbour - who had signed to play Chief Jim Hopper. Harbour disliked the new title Stranger Things so much he personally telephoned the Duffers to complain. The reference heavy pop culture easter eggs of the Duffers were already in evidence even at this very early stage. Hawkins and Jim Hopper are both characters in the 1987 science fiction action horror film Predator.

After the show changed its name, the Duffers found that they much preferred the location becoming a fictional town rather than a real place like Montauk. Creating a fictional town enabled them to follow in the footsteps of Stephen King with Castle Rock and David Lynch with Twin Peaks. The Duffers never considered calling their show Hawkins because they felt that having a show named after the town in which it takes place was an idea that had been done too many times before. This was another reason why, in hindsight, they were glad that Montauk became Stranger Things.

Most of the cast for Stranger Things was assembled when the show was still called Montauk. Winona Ryder, a cult eighties and nineties film star adored by the Duffers, was signed to play Joyce Byers - the mother of the missing child Will Byers in Stranger Things. Ryder was the first cast member to officially sign up for the show. The casting of Winona Ryder happily mitigated any desire Netflix might have had to pursue better known actors for the other parts. This allowed the Duffers and their casting director to cast who they wanted - even if those people were complete unknowns who hadn't done anything else.

Winona Ryder didn't really know what Netflix was or what streaming meant but she found herself charmed by the geeky enthusiasm of the Duffer Brothers. She also relished the chance to play a part where she was finally acting her own age for a change. Ryder had been offered many horror projects over the years but turned nearly all of them down because they simply didn't appeal to her. She made an exception with Stranger Things because she could see that the show might potentially have broad appeal to people of all ages (rather than just horror fans). The chance to play completely against type and portray a blue collar single mother was also very appealing to Ryder.

The Duffers, who had grown up watching Winona Ryder movies (like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Lucas, and Heathers), were completely in awe of Ryder on the set when they first began directing her in Stranger Things but this soon passed. They found Winona Ryder to be remarkably down to earth and modest. She didn't act like a star at all. Ryder, who does not have children of her own, consulted her mother on how to play Joyce Byers. She asked her mother how a real parent would act if their child was missing. Her mother said that any parent in that awful situation would be highly strung, emotional, and willing to do absolutely anything to get the child back. This then, was how Winona played Joyce in season one. She decided she would not hold back at all. Ryder had to convincingly fake all of Joyce's emotion, even the tears, in Stranger Things because she is allergic to the chemical actors use to make them appear teary eyed.

The burly New York born David Harbour was a perennial background player before Stranger Things made him famous. He was in his forties but had never been a leading man in anything. Harbour was a supporting actor seemingly destined to forever play second fiddle in any number of TV shows and movies. The Duffers watched Harbour in the historical 2014 TV show Manhattan and decided he was perfect to portray the flawed but heroic Jim Hopper. Harbour was both surprised and thrilled to get the part. He thought Netflix would insist on a bigger name to play Hopper and somehow veto his casting. Even the pitch document for Montauk had suggested the names Sam Rockwell or Ewan McGregor (two actors who had enjoyed their fair share of leading man roles) for the part of Hopper.

David Harbour partly based Hopper on Nick Nolte and Roy Scheider. Hopper is not a rippled buff action hero who can karate chop his way out of any situation. He is a plausible and flawed hero who just happens to be very brave and determined. One of the reasons why the Duffers cast Harbour as Chief Hopper is that they thought it would be interesting to have the hero played by a man who looked like he could just as easily be the villain. It was Harbour who had the idea of giving Hopper a hat. Indiana Jones was obviously a big inspiration on both the hat and the character of Hopper. Harrison Ford as Indy was a crabby and irritable sort of hero who always took a generous portion of punishment and David Harbour wanted Hopper to be in that vein. Harbour had Orlando Palacios at Worth & Worth design a hat based on one that President Eisenhower used to wear. He liked the idea of a hat because he felt that Hopper was the sort of man who kept his emotions close to his chest and therefore it would make sense for him to feel the need to hide behind a hat.

Another cult film star, Matthew Modine, like Winona Ryder, found himself charmed by the enthusiasm of the Duffers. Modine, famous for his roles in films like Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and Alan Parker's Birdy, agreed to play the sinister head of the secret laboratory. Modine, who was away working on a film in England at the time of the casting, turned the Duffers down at first because the part offered seemed too vague to him. However, when the Duffers personally pitched the project to Modine he changed his mind and agreed to take the role. Agent One now became Dr Brenner. Dr Brenner/Agent One was very under fleshed in the script treatment and so Modine was given considerable freedom to play and develop the character in his own way. In the original treatment for Stranger Things (or Montauk as it would have been), Dr Brenner/Agent One was dressed casually and a more disorganised character. Matthew Modine decided to make Brenner more regimented and aloof. The sort of man who would wear the same suit and tie each day so that he didn't have to waste any time choosing clothes. It's hard to imagine that Modine's Dr Brenner has any sort of life outside the lab or even goes home. Modine's vision of Brenner was a completely unemotional man who is totally dedicated to his work. Matthew Modine said that when he was given the part of Dr Brenner he found that the character had an awful lot of expositional dialogue. He asked that this dialogue be given to other characters in Brenner's scenes so that Brenner could come across as a man of few words - which made him more mysterious.

Modine later said that he was never completely convinced that Brenner was a villain. He suggested that Brenner was simply fighting the Cold War and trying to control Eleven's powers. Fans of Strangers Things would probably find it hard to concur with this assessment. Brenner was a villain they loved to hate. Given the love the Duffers have for horror Easter eggs, it can't be a coincidence that Modine as Dr Brenner looks uncannily like the famed horror director David Cronenberg in Stranger Things. Modine later said that the thing which impressed him most on Stranger Things was the fact that Netflix left the Duffers alone and gave them complete creative freedom. The creative freedom of the Duffers on Stranger Things was a consequence of the small chain of command in charge of the production. The Duffers, producer Dan Cohen and Shawn Levy occasionally dealt with Netflix executives but they did not have an external showrunner or studio boss making demands of them.

The teenage roles in Stranger Things were taken by actors with minimal credits. Natalia Dyer, with only short films and an appearance in Hannah Montana: The Movie to her name, was cast as Nancy Wheeler while Joe Keery was given the part of Nancy's obnoxious boyfriend Steve Harrington. Dyer was in her late teens while Keery was 23. Keery, who was working as a waiter when he got the part of Steve, also unsuccessfully tested for the part of Jonathan Byers. Keery's audition involved the scene where Steve meanly smashes Jonathan's Pentax camera.

Keery was told that Steve Harrington would be the school swimming ace in the show and so underwent intensive swimming training prior to shooting. In the end though this was dropped and Steve is not depicted as a swimming ace in season one of Stranger Things. Steve Harrington was originally conceived by the Duffers as a fairly simplistic teen villain trope. This plan would change though. Steve would turn out to be a much more surprising character in Stranger Things than he was in the early Montauk plans. Steve Harrington's hair in Stranger Things was inspired by Morten Harket - the lead singer of Norwegian synth popsters A-ha. A-ha are best known for the music video to Take On Me and doing the Bond theme for The Living Daylights. The 1980s was a decade of ludicrously big hair so Steve Harrington must have been very at home in this era. It could be that other gargantuan haired pop stars of the eighties like Duran Duran also inspired the lavish locks of Steve. Chase Stokes, star of the Netflix show Outer Banks, said he auditioned to play Steve Harrington in Stranger Things but messed up his audition by forgetting most of his lines. Banks did still appear in the show though - if only briefly. He played a student named Reed in the season one episode The Monster.

The part of Jonathan Byers was given to an English actor and musician named Charlie Heaton. Heaton, who was in his early twenties, was a drummer before he decided to turn his hand to acting. Heaton had few screen credits and was inexperienced but he impressed the casting director in an audition conducted through Skype in a London cafe. The casting of Heaton, Dyer, and Keery signified that the Duffers didn't really care what an actor had (or hadn't) done but simply wanted someone who was right for the part they had written. Heaton had a brooding and introspective sort of quality that made him feel right for Jonathan Byers. Shannon Purser, a teenager with no acting experience, was chosen to play Nancy's unlucky friend Barbara 'Barb' Holland. Purser was still working in a cinema when she was cast as Barb and actually tried to retain this position until the fame bestowed by Stranger Things made it impossible. Glennellen Anderson also auditioned to play Barb. Anderson was cast as Nicole - a minor character who appears in two episodes.

Steve's awful friends in season one, Tommy and Carol, were played by Chester Rushing and Chelsea Talmadge respectively. Rushing, who you might have later seen in Jeepers Creepers III, said there was a palpable electricity amongst the cast from the first reading and that being on the Stranger Things set was like going back in time to the 1980s. He enjoyed the chance to play a pure baddie too (unlike Steve Harrington, there are no redeeming qualities about Tommy whatsoever). Chelsea Talmadge would later be cast in the film adaptation of Stephen King's Shining sequel Doctor Sleep. The films of John Hughes, who was a one-man film factory in the 1980s when it came to movies about teenagers, were an obvious reference point for the teenage characters in Stranger Things. Sixteen Candles, Some Kind of Wonderful, Pretty in Pink, and The Breakfast Club were all instructive for the Stranger Things writers and costume designers. It is not too difficult to imagine Steve Harrington, a preening rich kid in season one, being played by a young James Spader in a genuine John Hughes film from the eighties.

Hundreds of boys were tested for the younger roles in Stranger Things and required to read scenes from Stand By Me and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in auditions. The Duffers knew this was by far the most important part of the casting process. A gratingly bad performance from just one of the child actors could potentially sink the whole show. The Duffers didn't want 'Disney' kids. They wanted to avoid child actors who seemed too arch, too showy, or too aware of the camera. They wanted kids who seemed authentic and felt like real children. The part of Mike Wheeler was exceptionally important in season one. Mike has the most lines of any character and is at the heart of the story. In season one of Stranger Things, Mike Wheeler is essentially Elliott in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The Duffers had to find their own Henry Thomas. Finn Wolfhard, a Canadian child actor, eventually won the pivotal role of Mike Wheeler despite a heavy cold which forced him to record an out of focus audition from his bed. Wolfhard had been in music videos and the TV show Supernatural.

In a twist of fate, Wolfhard also won a part in a forthcoming film adaptation of Stephen King's IT - a story the Duffers had always wanted to turn into a film themselves. There was the very real prospect of a clash of schedules and it was almost certain that Wolfhard's management, in that scenario, would have chosen a Hollywood movie over Stranger Things. In the end, Wolfhard was able to appear in both Stranger Things and IT. The part of Mike Wheeler didn't have to be recast. Wolfhard was cast because of the fidgety nervous energy he projected. The casting director and the Duffers liked this quality. The Duffers said that, out of all the boys in season one, Mike Wheeler was the closest to what they were like at that age. Wolfhard has a strong (and deliberate you would imagine) resemblance in season one of Stranger Things to Henry Thomas in the 1984 kids spy film Cloak & Dagger. Mike Wheeler and Davey Osborne (the character played by Henry Thomas in Cloak & Dagger) have the same hairstyle, brandish a walkie-talkie, and wear similar clothes.

Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin, two Broadway kids, won the parts of Dustin Henderson and Lucas Sinclair (now no longer named Lucas Conley as he was in the Montauk pilot script) respectively. Matarazzo was deemed not quite right when he tested to play Mike Wheeler but the Duffers were so impressed by his charisma and charm they decided he simply had to be in the show. Dustin Henderson is simply a bullied overweight nerd in the Montauk pitch bible. Matarazzo would make Dustin a much pluckier and more three dimensional character than these early sketch notes. The Duffers said that the Dustin Henderson we see in Stranger Things was completely informed by Matarazzo. Matarazzo's cleidocranial dysplasia (a condition which means his teeth haven't come through) was also written into the character.

Caleb McLaughlin only auditioned for the part of Lucas at the last minute because a slew of rejections in other auditions had left him deflated. McLaughlin had to go through five auditions to win the part of Lucas Sinclair. The Duffers played a prank on Caleb McLaughlin by calling him up and sounding downbeat as if they had bad news. They then gave him the good news. McLaughlin invented some details for his character when he suggested that Lucas should have some military style gadgets and a bandana. The character of Lucas changed a lot from the Montauk pitch. He was no longer the comic relief or struggling with the divorce of his parents. All of these elements were discarded.

Noah Schnapp was the last of the boys to be cast. Schnapp was slightly younger than the others and lived in New York with his Canadian family. A commercials veteran, he also appeared in the Spielberg film Bridge of Spies. Schnapp thought he had completely blown his Stranger Things chances because he had a migraine during the audition and didn't think he performed very well at all. He was at summer camp when the Duffers telephoned him to say he had got the part of Will Byers - the child that mysteriously vanishes. As with Gaten Matarazzo, Schnapp originally tested to play Mike Wheeler before he was assigned another role in the show. One thing that might have been a contributing factor in Schnapp's casting is that he looked like he could easily pass for Winona Ryder's son on real life.

For the absolutely crucial part of Eleven, the little girl with telekinetic powers who escapes from the laboratory and helps the boys on their quest to find Will Byers, the Duffers were very lucky to find Millie Bobby Brown - an English child actor who famously impressed Stephen King in the BBC America show Intruders. She also had small roles in NCIS, Modern Family, and Grey's Anatomy. Brown did a Skype audition in London with an impeccable American accent (which she taught herself by watching the Disney channel). It was obvious very quickly that she was perfect for this part. Brown was required to shave her long hair into a military buzzcut to play Eleven but cheerfully accepted this condition. She was shown a picture of Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road to see what her hair was going to be like in the show.

The role of Eleven was perfect timing indeed because Millie Bobby Brown had seriously considered giving up on her acting dreams after some audition failures. Brown had no idea in her audition that Eleven was going to have super powers nor that she would be playing a major character in the show. She would later say she had assumed Eleven was going to be a minor sidekick. Over 300 girls tested for the part of Eleven before Brown was cast. The Duffers found that Eleven was the hardest character to cast in season one. The reason for this is that child actors often find it hard to stay in character when they don't have any dialogue and have to stay silent. The Duffers saw that Millie Bobby Brown was clearly able to sustain the same level of focus at all times - even with the minimal dialogue of Eleven.

The shrewd casting director on Stranger Things was Carmen Cuba. Cuba and the Duffers were equally deft in their selection of the supporting actors. Joe Chrest was cast as the hapless Ted Wheeler while Cara Buono signed to play his frustrated wife Karen. Ted Wheeler almost certainly seems to be based on George McFly from Back to the Future. The New York born Buono was best known for roles in Mad Men and The Sopranos. The likeable Randall Havens (known for appearances in Halt and Catch Fire and Archer) was cast as the school science teacher Mr Clarke. Mr Clarke was no longer the local Indiana Jones of the Montauk pitch but now more of an endearing and gentle cameo player. Havens had a moustache in real life and thinks this is probably what got him the part.

It is possible that the character of Mr Clarke was radically altered from the Montauk pitch in Stranger Things because having an Indiana Jones teacher at the school would completely unbalance the show. If the local teacher in Hawkins was like Indiana Jones and a science expert to boot, then why would you need Jim Hopper or most of the other characters? Mr Clarke would be able to solve everything on his own. The Duffers said that Randy Havens as Mr Clarke functions as the eighties version of Wikipedia in season one of Stranger Things. He is there to answer any science questions the boys might have.

Aimee Mullins, an athlete and model turned actress, was picked to play Terry Ives. Terry Ives underwent a change of gender for Stranger Things and was no longer a conspiracy theorist but now a comatose woman with an important connection to the laboratory. Mullins was born with fibular hemimelia and had both of her legs amputated below the knee as a baby. She competed in the Paralympics in 1996, which, appropriately enough, were in Atlanta. Amy Seimetz was cast as Becky Ives, the sister of Terry. She is best known for AMC's The Killing. Along with Winona Ryder (Alien: Resurrection) and Paul Reiser (Aliens), Seimetz is one of three Stranger Things cast members to have been in the Alien franchise. Seimetz was in Alien: Covenant. Amy Seimetz said she based the look and body language of Becky Ives on her grandmother.

Rob Morgan and John Reynolds were signed to play Hopper's police deputies Powell and Callahan. Powell is a famous character in Die Hard and Callahan is a probable reference to Father Callahan from Stephen King's Salem's Lot. Ross Partridge agreed to take on the part of Lonnie Byers - the untrustworthy estranged husband of Joyce. The part of Florence, Hopper's secretary at the police station, was won by Susan Shalhoub Larkin (who is the sister of Monk actor Tony Shalhoub). Child actors Peyton Wich and Cade Jones took on the recurring season one roles of the school bullies Troy and James. Troy's full name is Troy Walsh according to the Hawkins year book.

When they were still pitching Montauk, the Duffers cut together a concept trailer composed of classic eighties film clips backed with a John Carpenter score. Although there were no scripts when the actors were cast, the actors were all shown the test trailer the Duffers had designed using iconic moments from 1980s fantasy movies. The actors therefore understood what the Duffers were trying to do and were excited about the potential of the concept. Gaten Matarazzo said he genuinely had no idea if Stranger Things would be successful but he did think that it would be cool and exciting.

One thing that did concern the Duffers was the sheer (and ever escalating) volume of TV and streaming content. There was now far more content available than any one person could ever hope to watch. The Duffers did worry that Stranger Things might potentially get lost in the crowd. Although it is sometimes suggested that the first season of Stranger Things operated on a modest budget this is not really true. At $6 million an episode, the first season cost around $50 million. While this is modest compared to big Hollywood blockbusters, $6 million an episode is fairly high end for a TV show - especially a brand new one with no track record to speak of.

Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon of the electronic synth group Survive (S U R V I V E) were chosen to compose the score for Stranger Things. The Duffers were impressed by their work on the offbeat 2014 thriller film The Guest. As a test, they had taken out the John Carpenter music on their Montauk pitch trailer and replaced it with music by Survive. It was a perfect match. Stein and Dixon were brought in before a single frame of Stranger Things had been shot. They even supplied some music that the Duffers and Carmen Cuba could put over the actor audition scenes.

Dixon and Stein were heavily influenced by Tangerine Dream - a German electronic group who composed the scores for films like Firestarter and Ridley Scott's Legend. Three songs by Tangerine Dream were eventually used in season one of Stranger Things. Dixon and Stein said they were asked by the Duffers, as a test of their suitability, to compose some light-hearted playful pieces of music. The Duffers knew that Dixon and Stein could do moody atmospheric pieces but they would also need some jaunty and more whimsical music in Stranger Things from time to time. Dixon and Stein passed this test.

Atlanta, Georgia, was chosen as the shooting location for Stranger Things. Atlanta's Screen Gems Studios, the production base for Stranger Things, is a 10-stage, 33-acre Atlanta studio complex. The tax rates were a factor but the eclectic geographical nature of the area was perfect for the production requirements. The only problem they encountered with Atlanta as a production base was shooting the Christmas scenes near the end of season one where it is supposed to be cold and frosty. Ice had to be imported in to make these scenes more authentic. Georgia had the generic any town USA atmosphere the Duffers wanted and there were also large national parks.

Shooting began in November 2015. The first scene the Duffers shot was the opening (after the prologue in the lab) of the first episode with the four boys playing Dungeon & Dragons in the Wheeler basement. The production of season one was a low-key affair with hardly any media buzz. The cast were not given all of the scripts and had no idea how the story was going to end. They were only given a fresh script for the episode they were about to shoot. No one in the cast had the faintest idea if Stranger Things would find an audience or continue beyond one season but they did have confidence that they were making something good.

The aim of the Duffers was to make Stranger Things akin to a PG-13 film that could be enjoyed by all ages but might be too scary for younger children. However, the Duffers did not feel constricted or bound by this general ambition and were prepared to 'push' the audience with some grisly horror if the mood took them. The scene at the beginning of season one where the terrified scientist fails to escape from the Demogorgon is a message from the Duffers to the audience. The message is that the viewer can expect plenty of horror and scares. The Duffers were always adamant throughout the planning and writing that Stranger Things would have a very limited number of episodes. They didn't want their show to ever feel like it was treading water or spreading its premise out too thinly.

The Upside Down, the mysterious, dangerous, and desolate area opened by the dimensional rift in Stranger Things, was known as the Nether in the scripts when season one was in production. This was later changed because the Duffers got tired of hearing jokes about 'nether regions'. They thought the Upside Down was a much better name so the Nether officially became the Upside Down. The Upside Down was not supposed to feature much in the original plans for Stranger Things. It was supposed to be a place that was largely unseen and would have to be imagined by the audience. A place of Lovecraft inspired horror that would be too terrifying to endure or show.

By the time that Stranger Things went before the cameras, the Duffers changed their mind and decided that the Nether (as it was) would be shown onscreen several times. The Duffers wrote a thirty page document that established the ground rules for the Upside Down. This enabled the set designers and special effects team to have a clearer idea of what was expected of them. The document did not though explain what the Upside Down was. The Duffers thought the Upside Down would be much scarier if it retained some mystery and we didn't truly understand it.

The design of the Upside Down was made easier by everyone involved in the production design and special effects having a similar concept of what it should look like. They all saw this as a place of vines and spores and a landscape that appeared ravaged by disease. They wanted the Upside Down to look wet and swampy and be a murky and misty place to explore. The inspirations for the Upside Down are many and varied. Stephen King's The Mist (where a blanket of monster festooned fog descends on a town after a military experiment), was an obvious inspiration on both the Upside Down and the story in Stranger Things. The Phantom Zone prison dimension from the 1984 film Supergirl and the ghostly mist engulfed town of Silent Hill in the video game and movie series were also influences on the Upside Down.

Other inspirations for the Upside Down were the nightmare planet LV-426 in Ridley Scott's

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Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 08.12.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-6316-0

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