The Duffer brothers told Deadline that the spin-off series is moving forward and they're really excited about it:
“We are moving forward with it. Netflix, they finally know what it is. We held it. They were so frustrated,” Matt said. “We just would not tell them. Finn [Wolfhard] guessed what it was. So he was the only one who knew.”
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“I think he might have forgotten, though, honestly, because last time he brought it up, I was like, ‘That’s not what it is,’” Ross said. “Maybe he was just being coy. I don’t know.”
In August, Wolfhard
told Variety that he speculated the show would be like David Lynch’s
Twin Peaks but with an anthology twist and a similar universe setting tied together with The Upside Down mythology. He suggested that there could be a lab in Russia where the spin-off is centered without any mention of Hawkins or the original
Stranger Things characters.
“No, that’s the funny thing, because everyone freaked out that he had revealed what the spin off was,” Matt chimed in. “I think he forgot. I actually need to talk to him about it, but anyway, now everybody at Netflix knows. They’re very excited behind it there. I’m really excited about the team we’ve assembled that I can’t talk about without potentially getting into trouble, but we’ll put out more information soon. We’re trying to get it to go pretty quickly. So hopefully it’s gonna happen soon.”
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“The spinoff idea is something that Ross and I came up with that we’re extremely excited about. It’s quite different, though, than Stranger Things. So I think the key is that it’s coming from a place of passion, whether it’s from us or from somebody else. It’s not an assignment. It’s not forced like that. You’ve just seen that too many times,” Matt added in their conversation with Deadline. “The market, it’s diminishing returns at a certain point. You want it to feel special when it comes out. I want, if something’s coming out with a Stranger Things title on it, it’s good, it’s quality. So Ross and I are going to remain very, very involved, even though we’re going to be at Paramount. In fact, we’re busy working on the spin off idea right now.”
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“We want to be intentional and very careful in terms of how we expand, in that we’re not doing anything for the sake of doing it, for the sake of putting more Stranger Things out into the world. It has to be something that we’re extremely excited about. The cartoon was something that we brought to Netflix because we grew up watching The Real Ghostbusters and the Beetlejuice cartoon,” Matt said, referencing the upcoming animated series Stranger Things: Tales From ’85. “So we liked the idea of taking this and turning into an animated form. It’s also nice because the kids can remain kids forever. So we thought that was cool to capture that sort of Saturday morning cartoon feel. The play [Stranger Things: The First Shadow] came from Steven Daldry.”
Sounds fantastic and I can't wait to see what they have in store for us.
